10 ways to sell yourself with a professional resume

By Neil Kokemuller

www.professionalresumeorder.com

Marketing yourself during a job search is virtually the same as a company marketing any product or service. You select the target audience, or preferred employers. You then decide the best approach and message to communicate your benefits, as the product, to the company. Essentially, you present to the company reasons they should hire you. The professional resume is typically the most common marketing tool used by job prospects to communicate their benefits to employers.

The professional resume is a great way to demonstrate to employers, efficiently, why they need to meet with you for an interview. The job of a professional resume is to get you an interview with an employer to sell yourself face to face. The average resume gets scanned for about seven seconds. In the seven seconds, you want to hit the employer with quick and effective selling points that tell them why they should talk to you.

Here are ten great tips to sell yourself effectively to get an interview:

Make it visually appealing – One of the biggest mistakes made by resume writers is to attempt to cram in to much information, or to neglect the importance of aesthetics. Some people use tiny margins and no white space to fill a page or two with content. Have a resume without visual appeal is a huge mistake. It appears overwhelming to someone looking for a reason to cut their stack of papers.

Use white space – As a follow up to visual appeal, white space is important in market and advertising. Thus, it is important in your resume. It is better to have 8-10 great selling points emphasis brilliantly by white space, as opposed to 15-20 points that get lost in the sea of ink and words.

Proofread – In today’s cutthroat employment world, typos and misspellings are sure ways to get tossed in the rejection pile. Employers view attention to detail as important in many positions.

Tell them what you’ve done lately – While an efficient review of your work history is good, focusing your space on the most current and important experiences is better. Documenting your history of work allows the employer to see your depth of experience, but use the most space to sell your last several years of activity. This is what tells the employer what skills you’ve been honing recently.

Use 2 pages if necessary – Some people still believe a resume “has” to be a one page document. If you are a recent college graduate with limited work experience, this is probably a good strategy. Again, employers want something quick and to the point. However, it is perfectly acceptable for experience, or senior level candidates to use two pages. In fact, it is much better to have a neatly presented two page document than a crammed one page resume virtually every time. This relates to the importance of having the most current and impacting selling points presented early (on the first page).

Use bullet points – Some people still mistakenly use paragraph summaries to review work experience. Paragraphs will not be read. Employers want quick, concise, bulleted statements that offer important selling points related to your key work experiences and accomplishments.

Don’t use gimmicks or pictures – People often ask if they should include personal photos or other visuals. Generally, employers are not interested in these. Actually, personal photos in most cases would do more harm than good. A good rule of thumb with a resume is to give people what they need to know and nothing more. It is very true that employers, as people, make subjective decisions about employees based on looks and appearance. Although you may be a very nice looking person, do not risk an employer judging you on your looks. This is especially true in industries where gender, racial, age, or ethnic discrimination is inherent, or common.

Remember you are selling – A resumes job is to get you interviews. If your selling tools in not working ask yourself why. It is possible you are not effectively selling your experiences and benefits.

Show accomplishments through numbers – While resumes can highlight key areas of responsibilities, the most effect personal selling points are those that offer a measure of comparison or a numerical perspective of accomplishment. Discussing profit or sales performance, customer service ratings, customer feedback data, dollars save and dollars earned are all great ways to sell. Employers basically care about themselves. They want to know how you can either make them money or improve their performance, or save them money.

Invest in a professional resume – Resume writing is a very specialized skill. While there are some high priced resume services, there are also high impact professional resume writers who offer great value for the money. One service provider, www.professionalresumeorder.com offers a high value service that includes a package with a cover letter. Investing a modest fee for a great selling tool is a great investment. Do not be afraid to get help from a professional people marketer!