Need more interviews? Are you frustrated with your job search? Here are 5 ways to make your resume stand out.
Are you sending out resume after resume with no callbacks? If so, listen in to this episode as Jonaed breaks down five things you can do to make your resume stand out. Over the past three years he’s helped over 400 people land jobs at places like Meta, Hubspot, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Tesla (just to name a few).
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Hey, are you frustrated with your job search? Are you sending out resume after resume with no callbacks? If so, I have some good news. After three years of helping over 400 people land jobs at places like Meta, HubSpot, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Tesla, Disney, Sony, just to name a few, I created a course. In the Get Your Dream Career course, you'll discover best practices for creating a resume that stands out and you'll also learn how to optimize your job search. It covers every aspect of the job, including resumes, application strategy, networking, LinkedIn profile optimization, interview guidance, and salary negotiation. You will also get a behind the scenes view of how recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates. And of course, you'll get resume and cover letter templates. Get one step closer to your dream job. Sign up at the link in the notes below.
Welcome to the No Degree podcast where our guests are either college or high school dropouts, or just didn't get the opportunity to go to college in the first place. But how do you actually become successful without a college degree? For the rest of the year, we're going to be doing things a little bit differently. Instead of sharing success stories, I'll share actual steps you can apply to your job search, there will be three parts. Part one, we'll discuss five tips to make your resume stand out. For part two, we'll discuss five things you need to know to ace your next interview. And for part three, we'll discuss five ways to use networking to accelerate your job search. Before we get into the first part, I'm going to preface this by saying that besides my role here at No Degree, I'm also a resume strategist and a UMAP certified career coach. For the past three years, I've helped over 400 job seekers, update their resumes, and ace their interviews. Let's dive into the five things you can do to make your resume stand out. First, highlight your achievements. I once had a client that changed 10,000 tires over the course of six months. Instead of writing change tires, you want to go into how many? Now this client of mine doesn't have to say how busy he is. They know he's busy.
I had another client that would train 50 people per month, he worked at that job for over three years. So think about this, 50 per month means 600 every year. If you're doing that for three years, you've trained over 1800 people. Saying that you trained 1800 people on sales, customer service, and emotional intelligence really showcases how well you did in your role and it shows how much of an expert you are. Here's some questions that will help you highlight your achievements. How did you make things better? Did you make your company more money? Did you save them money or did you save them time? Now you may not have the exact numbers, but you can give a reasonable estimate. For that person that trained about 1800 people, you don't want to say 1800 if you've actually trained 5000. You also don't want to say 1800 if you've actually trained 200. Get in the ballpark. It's okay, you don't need to have the exact number, you just want to give them an idea of how much you've done.
Here's the thing, so many people don't realize the impact that they have at their jobs. So that's why when you're writing your resume, think about the numbers and you’ll wow yourself. These are numbers that you really need to bring up during the interview. Also remember the goal of the resume is to show what you do at your job and the results that you have brought in. The interview is where you go into details of how you did it. Tip number two, make sure your resume is ATS friendly. I've seen a lot of people come to me with resumes that are very fancy with graphics, pictures, and all that. The big issue is that these resumes don't parse well for applicant tracking system. I've had people who had these resumes, without any changes in content, they changed the format. They instantly got more interviews and in some cases
double to triple the amount of interviews. I don't know about you. But do you want to lose out on that many interviews? Don't add in fancy things to your resume. The only fancy formatting I use for my client resumes are bold. I don't use italics, underlines or line dividers don't use columns either. One thing to know is that resumes are not read, they're skimmed. So make sure your resume is in a format that is very easy to read. Tip number three, focus on the most important things, less is more. You do not need to put absolutely everything that you have done. I am not a big fan of listing soft skills on the resume. Things like communication, leadership, or problem solving.
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No one is going to look at your resume and then say, “Yes, this person has communication and leadership. I need to call them back right now.” Instead, you need to show examples of communication and leadership. Have you collaborated with other teams? Have you led other projects that had good results? Remember, show, don't tell. Also, you don't need to list everything. Just because you put more on your resume does not mean people will read it. All it will mean is that people are less likely to read the things you want them to. Your resume should generally be between one to two pages. The only time I have seen people require more is for federal resumes and for academic positions where they want you to list more positions and some other achievements. For people with more experience, two pages is generally the standard. Now, I'm not a big fan of going to three pages, if they don't like you in two pages, they're not going to let you in three. You should also focus on the last 10 to 12 years of experience and showcase the relevant positions. I worked at Popeyes in high school and I really liked that job. I also worked at Barnes and Nobles, it doesn't make sense to put it on my resume now. Just remember, you can always highlight and bring up past experience during the job interview. The resume is to get the call, the interview is where you have a lot more freedom to showcase different things.
Tip number four, look at the job descriptions that you want. What are they asking for? What are the words that repeatedly come up? What are the skills? What are the software that they're looking for? Make sure your resume portrays that you can do the job that you're applying to. Once you read enough job descriptions, you will get an idea of the requirements. Just know that different job families will have different requirement. A resume is meant for one job family, think of a job family as a role that is very similar. So social media marketing manager, they may be called different things at different companies. But the roles and work are similar. Use one type of resume for these roles. Now, you can't necessarily use the same resume for a product marketing manager, you would have to tweak it to focus on different skill sets. So, you may need different resumes if you're applying for vastly different positions. I would highly recommend to narrow down your focus to two or three fields. If you're all over the place, you're going to struggle in the job search. Now the other thing is if you repeatedly see skills that you don't have that you can easily get, that's a sign that those are areas you should focus on. Take an online course, read some books, get those skills somehow, maybe you need to showcase a project that demonstrates that you have that skills.
Now for the fifth and final tip, you do not need to meet all the requirements for a job posting. I generally say that you should aim for 70% of the requirements. A job description is a wish list and oftentimes, if you meet all the requirements, you are overqualified for the job. Just make sure you meet the minimum requirements for a job, and that you can pick things up along the way. You may have to work harder during the first few months. But if it's feasible, you can do the job. Now, for example, you don't want to go for jobs that you can't do. Don't apply to a programming job if you have never programmed in your life. You
are going to be in a lot of trouble and you probably won't even pass the interview. So, these are the five things you can apply to your resume to make it stand out even if you don't have a college degree. Join us again next time for the second part of the series where we will discuss how to ace your next job interview. Thank you for listening and looking forward to seeing you next week.
Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this information was valuable, and you learned a lot. Stay tuned for the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. No Degree wants to remain free from influence so that we can talk about the topics without bias. If you think the shows are worth a dollar two, please check out our Patreon page. Any amount is appreciated and will go towards making future episodes even better. Follow us on Instagram or Snapchat at No Degree podcast, on Facebook @facebook.com/nodegreeinc. If you want to personally reach out to me connect or follow me on LinkedIn @Jonaed Iqbal, spelled J-O-N-A-E-D, last name I-Q-B-A-L. Until next time, no degree, no problem. Nodegree.com
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