A Resume that Sells

There’s something that distinguishes a good resume from a bad one (and can turn a good resume into a great one). While it’s fairly simple in theory, it can be difficult in practice because it involves thinking about your resume in a fundamentally different way than you may be used to.

The concept is this: your resume is a sales document, not a biography.

I’ll lay out what this means for your resume momentarily. But first – for the non-salespeople reading – let me give you a crash course in sales theory. (If you are in sales, bear with me and keep reading, because the most difficult product to sell is yourself, and this will help you do that.)

In sales, one can sell using the features of a product or service, or its benefits. While most people in sales would agree that the more important of the two is benefits, it’s not an either/or question. Both are important. It’s just that the features are only important to the extent that they give the buyer the benefit they’re looking for.

By way of example, think about the last time you bought a car. If you did your research, you probably looked at the features: seating and cargo capacity, safety features, fuel economy, comfort and convenience accessories. But was that really what you were buying? I’d bet not. You were interested in interior room... because you were thinking about the times you’d have passengers and stuff along for the ride. You were interested in safety... because if an accident happens, you want to protect yourself and the people with you. You’re interested in the ‘bells and whistles’... because they make long drives more comfortable (and sure, because some of them are just fun to have).

The same holds true for any major purchase. You want to know the specs of the smartphone you’re buying, but only because they allow you to do the things you need and want to do with that device. You may look at the picture and sound quality of a big screen TV, but what you’re really thinking about is the quality of the movie-night experiences you’ll have with friends and family.

Far too many people write their resumes as they’d write a spec sheet for a car, a phone, or a TV. Your work experiences, the responsibilities you’ve held in various roles; those are your ‘features’. Not that they’re not important – they are. But only to the extent that they demonstrate the benefits you’ll bring to a prospective employer. A comprehensive list of tasks and duties may accurately reflect what you did in your previous jobs, but it doesn’t do much to sell you as a potential new hire.

When writing or updating your resume, think first like a salesperson. What is the ‘customer’ (in this case, a potential employer) really looking for? What value are they hoping to get from bringing on someone new? What benefit will they be looking for you to provide? In some cases, the answer to these questions are fairly easy. Hiring a new salesperson should generate more revenue. Hiring a new manager for a team should mean better results from the people on that team, and perhaps less staff turnover.

Every part of your resume can be viewed through that lens. When you describe a previous job, you don’t have a ‘biographical responsibility’ to mention every single thing you did in that role. Selling yourself means focusing in on the aspects of your work that brought the most value to your previous employer and are of most relevance to your next employer; providing more detail about those, and less about things that are less directly related.

This also means that at a certain point in your career, you can start leaving some things off entirely. If you’ve been in your field for about ten years or more, for example, you no longer need to include much detail about jobs you held previously that aren’t related to your career, or even to include those jobs at all. (Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t include jobs you held years ago, it just means you should only include the details about them that help to sell you as a candidate, and the value you bring to a company.)

Your academic background – even if it’s not related to your current career – should usually be included because attaining a degree or a certification shows intelligence, commitment, and a willingness to work hard. That said, any additional continuing education courses only need to be included if they’re directly tied to the value you would bring to a new employer.

This shift to a sales mindset is also why tracking and listing specific achievements on your resume is so important. Unlike a list of responsibilities, accomplishments – particularly those that are quantifiable, expressed in percentages, dollar figures and the like – underscore how you benefited your previous employers. Which, in turn, helps a prospective employer see how you’d benefit them.

In the end, you may end up with a resume that has less quantity, but that’s fine: quality is what counts. Getting rid of less relevant content that doesn’t sell the benefit you’d offer as a new hire is decluttering. The reader is left with the content that really shows what you can do for them.

Does your resume read more like a biography, or like a sales pitch? If you’re not sure how to approach this, we’d be happy to provide some pointers. Send us your resume today, and let us help make sure it sells you as well as your experience deserves.