How to Write a Resume That Will Bring You High Wages
Many consider well-written resumes a ticket to job interviews, but that’s not so.
A well-written resume is a bill indicating your professional value. When reading your resume, HR managers expect to see how much you cost as an expert. If you can’t sell your professionalism through your resume, it will be challenging to do that at interviews.
To run for high wages, you need to write a resume with every word crying about your expertise and worth.
How to do that?
Use Business English
HR managers pay attention to the writing style of your resume because the words you use can tell a lot about your personality and professional background. Make sure to write in the so-called resume language:
Use commonplace words, write short sentences, avoid formalism, and don’t copy stereotyped expressions from others.
Proofread your resume. Elementary spelling and grammar mistakes are not what recruiters expect from a professional applying for well-paid jobs.
Customize a Resume
Forget about writing a one-size-fits-it-all resume. When running for different positions, take time and create several resumes demonstrating the most significant aspects of each one.
Thus, if running for a marketer position, recruiters expect to see complete projects in your resume. If you are a designer, demonstrate creativity to them; if looking for a job as a professional essay writer – academicism; if you’re an office manager – flexibility, etc.
Demonstrate Your Success
Stop thinking of resumes as nothing but sheets of paper about education, job experience, and skills. A million-dollar resume tells the story of your success, i.e., how those achievements relate to your personality and desired job position.
Achievements add 50% of value to your resume. Measured in numbers and significant changes you’ve made, they might sound as follows:
- “I’ve increased the sales by 30% for 3 months.”
- “I’ve brought a new product to the market in 4 months, which helped to earn $800,000 in 6 months.”
Showcase your skills in:
- Design: for web, graphic, interior.
- Training: for e-learning, teaching, and mentoring.
- Writing: for essays, papers, and editing.
- IT: for coding, system administrating, and security.
- Marketing: for branding, product management, and business development.
Tell About Qualities
The personal qualities of a candidate do matter for employers nowadays. If we analyzed what they consider during interviews, 40% would go to professional skills, 40% – to personal qualities, and 20% – to motivation.
Before now, it was enough to list them in resumes. Today, you should prove you have them by providing examples. Writing like this could work:
“I’m a self-starter: I developed and implemented the work strategy of my department after the team lead had left.”
The personal qualities of a candidate do matter for employers nowadays.
Structure and Format It
For most recruiters, the following resume structure works the best:
- A full name.
- A photo.
- A city and phone number. (No need to write a postal address, as recruiters don’t plan to visit you and check if you live there.)
- The desired job position.
- Competencies, aka knowledge, skills, achievements, and personal qualities.
- Job experience, starting from the latest one.
- Additional information: courses, languages, driving license, etc.
The format of your resume matters, either. The best fonts are Calibri or Arial (size 10-12) with no charts. Other fonts work too, but ensure you choose the most efficient one for writing.
Consider the size. A two-page resume is ideal, and one page is fine if you’re a graduate looking for your first job, but 3-4 pages are too much as 80% of recruiters won’t read them. (Getting about 100 resumes daily, they don’t have time for that.)
Save your resumes in DOCX format. ODT and RTF might fail to open, and PDF doesn’t allow you to make notes (recruiters might want to do that before sending your resume to big bosses). DOC makes a resume look archaic (coming from the era before Office 2007).
Earn Scores from Recruiters
Recruiters spend 5-10 seconds scanning each resume they get. What they check first is your name and photo, your job experience, and your education.
Each section of your resume gives it a kind of score from a recruiter, and if the resume gets enough scores – they start working with it, sending it to big bosses, inviting you to a job interview, etc. So, do your best to write a resume that will earn maximum scores.
What can help you get them?
- A photo of high quality.
- Words and key phrases you use in the resume.
- The format of your resume.
- Brands for whom you worked, as well as job positions you took.
- Your success stories.
- Education and training.
Write a Cover Letter
Though it’s not obligatory to send, a well-written cover letter might add a surplus value to your resume. Keep it short but try to answer the following questions:
- Who are you?
- What have you done for other employers?
- What can you do for this employer?
- Why do you want to work with them?
Long Story Short…
Writing a resume that will bring you a top-paying job requires no specific knowledge or skills. Imagine it is a program interface: Would you download the program with poor design, usability, and features?
For recruiters, a resume is your interface. Is it attractive enough? Consider it a purchase proposal, show them your worth, and make them want to buy you.
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