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How To Customize Your Resume For A Specific Opportunity

This article is more than 8 years old.

Before we talk about customizing your resume for a specific job opportunity that you want to pursue, let's spend a second reviewing what makes a strong resume.

Your resume will convey your heft and power when it has a human voice in it. Dead zombie language like "Results-oriented professional" was perfect for a resume in 1992 - not now! You have to sound like yourself in your resume now, because if you don't sound like yourself, you sound like every battle drone. You sound like no one.

If you pitch your resume into Black Hole recruiting portals then it won't matter at first whether your resume uses a human voice or a zombie voice. The machine doesn't care. The keyword-searching algorithm is only looking for keywords in your resume.

But what happens if you have the right keywords?

The good news is that at that point, a real human being will pull up your resume and look at it. The human being is deciding which of the applicants who had the desired keywords should move forward to the next step in the recruiting process.

The next step is a live interview, either face-to-face or using the phone or Skype. Who is going to get that interview -- the person whose resume looks like millions of other resumes, or the person who sounds like a living human being with a pulse and a heartbeat?

The human voice in your resume is essential. If you're not sure how to write your Human-Voiced Resume, read this story. 

I don't want you to lob your resume into one more automated applicant tracking system. That is never the best approach to your hiring manager -- the person who will be your boss in your next job.

 

There is a better way to approach that person,  using your  Human-Voiced Resume and another document called a Pain Letter.

A Pain Letter is kind of like a traditional cover letter, but it's way more powerful and it's written specifically for this one hiring manager, not for everybody. You can learn about Pain Letters here.

Every time you apply for a particular position or reach out to a particular hiring manager, you can customize your resume. You can bring out the aspects of your background that are most relevant to the job you're pursuing now.

To tailor your resume to a specific opportunity, pay close attention to these two sections of your Human-Voiced Resume:

  • The Summary at the top of your resume, and
  • The Dragon-Slaying Stories you chose to bring each of your past jobs to life in your resume

Your Human-Voiced Resume Summary

The Summary at the top of your Human-Voiced Resume ties your career story together. It is a frame -- a container for the hiring manager who doesn't know you yet. Your manager will read your resume's Summary and understand how you view yourself in your career. That is essential! What does a list of your past jobs tell someone?

That only tells them what you've already done. They also need to know what you plan to do next, and why! Here's a sample Human-Voiced Resume Summary for Paul, an HR person:

HR Business Partner

I'm an HR person who thrives when I'm attached to a business unit and can handle their recruiting, employee relations and employee communications. I have seen the power of a positive culture in attracting great people and achieving tremendous results. I helped Acme Explosives go from 13 to 200 employees and break the $100M revenue mark. I'm ready for my next challenge!

This is Paul's standard Summary. Paul just spotted a very cool organization that had not been on his radar screen before. The organization is called Angry Chocolates. Paul bought some Angry Chocolates products (their Angry Choco-Mints) and loved them.

He began researching the company. He found out that they have a part-time Payroll person but no real HR person even through Angry Chocolates is growing fast. Paul wants to be Angry's first HR person!

Paul thinks about Grace Jones, the CEO of Angry Chocolates. Grace is a lifetime entrepreneur. She's never worked in a big company. Paul has read all about her. He knows that the big-company title "HR Business Partner" is likely to sound stiff and off-putting to Grace when he sends her his Human-Voiced Resume.

For the version of his resume that Grace will see, Paul ditches the HR Business Partner title and calls himself HR Leader instead. He also changes the first sentence of his Summary so that it says "I'm an HR leader who thrives when I'm working alongside a CEO, handling his or her recruiting, employee relations and other HR functions." Now Paul is speaking Grace's language!

Your Dragon-Slaying Stories

Your Human-Voiced Resume doesn't list the tasks and duties you were responsible for at each job in your career history. Instead, you'll tell very short Dragon-Slaying Stories in your resume. Your stories bring across much more of your power and personality than any boring lists of tasks could do!

You can switch your stories in and out of your resume as you pursue specific opportunities. Paul's standard edition of his Human-Voiced Resume contains lots of Dragon-Slaying Stories, but many of them are geared to larger employers. Here's one of Paul's Dragon-Slaying Stories that isn't likely to make Grace Jones' heart beat faster:

In my first six months at Able Electronics I helped our 7000-member sales team increase its understanding of SalesForce to get utilization up 15%.

Paul wants Grace to know that he understands her life as a small-business CEO. He doesn't want her eyes to glaze over as she reads his resume. He can't expect Grace to get excited about the fact that Paul helped his Sales VP get the salespeople at Able Electronics using Salesforce.

He isn't sure whether Grace Jones has ever heard of Salesforce or sales automation tools (but if she has not, he will tell her all about them)! Paul kills the sales-automation utilization story from the edition of his Human-Voiced Resume that will go to Grace. He replaces it with this growing-business story:

I launched a grassroots recruiting campaign that filled eight of our most-critical roles in six weeks.

Grace should get a kick out of that story! Paul noticed that Angry Chocolates has a half-dozen job openings posted. He wants Grace to know that he can step in and help her get those jobs filled!

You can customize your resume for specific opportunities the same way Paul did. Take your hiring manager's point of view, and see your background through his or her eyes!