Have you ever applied to a job online and just never heard any response back? If not, then you’re a magician and you must share your magical ways with the rest of us! But really… this feeling of being ignored happens to everyone. The truth is that more than likely you’re resume wasn’t ignored, it was just impossible to find among the hundreds of other resumes that the electronic systems and HR recruiters and hiring managers had to sift through. Luckily, there’s a solution! (And it’s a pretty simple one too.)
The key to making your resume to stand out among the other applicants is to tailor it to the job you are applying for. But what does this actually mean?
When applying for a job, most people will just take their stock resume and upload it to their application. And now you’re probably thinking “well obviously, that’s what you’re supposed to do!” The key here is that this is what “most people” do. You don’t want to be “most people” when you’re applying for a job! And moving forward, you’re not going to be. Here’s how:
Print out (or copy/paste into a word document) the job description of the position you’re applying for. Highlight all the required skills and responsibilities that align with your previous experiences.
Underline the phraseology and action-oriented words used in the descriptions you highlighted.
On your resume, highlight all the skills and responsibilities that match what you highlighted in the job description. Check that you have all the pieces in your resume that you identified in the job description. If you’re missing anything, now is the perfect time to add them!
Now it’s time to rearrange your resume! All those bullets that you now have highlighted in your resume are the key things that the hiring team wants to see in you. Take those bad boys and move them to the top of each experience you have. You want these to be the first things that the hiring manager reads when they skim through your resume. You can even bold them if you want!
Remember way back when we underlined action words in the job description? We’re going to bring back all those lessons we learned in middle school about restating the question for essays… (Yuck… right?) You want to edit your resume to include that same terminology used in the job description–specifically mimicking matching skills and responsibilities between the two. These bullets will now stand out to a hiring manager as “EXACTLY what I’m looking for!” because you used their own wording to help remind them.
Finally, you’re ready to apply for the job! Send that new and targeted resume over and wait for them to call you requesting an interview! If you really want to stand out (which you do), wait a little longer to send that resume out because in the next section we are going to write a kick-ass cover letter, which will make your application package even stronger!
Unfortunately, there’s no time to celebrate yet (that comes later). Go find the other jobs that you want to apply for and repeat this process–it shouldn’t be too difficult because a lot of job descriptions will be similar for the positions you want. It’s definitely more work than just sending the same stock resume to jobs, but this little bit of extra time and effort you put in will pay huge dividends for you and make your resume stand out. While everyone else is submitting that same standard white paper resume, yours is shining bright.
There’s another key to crafting an excellent resume that is often ignored. I like to think of the resume as your first impression to the hiring manager. Unfortunately, you’ll typically only get eyes on that first impression for FIVE SECONDS (or even less sometimes)! With such a short time, the first impression of your first impression is extremely important… That encompasses the formatting, organization, and general attractiveness of your resume.
You’re probably thinking, “What?!?! I’m being judged on the ATTRACTIVENESS of a piece of paper??” In industry, things like organization and being concise are more important (and more rare) than you imagine. Not only can your resume show off these traits, but making it look nice will give you an edge over the competition. In a later post I’ll go in depth on formatting and organization for your resume (which should help even if you constantly struggle with formatting).
Also, if you’re enjoying the content on How To Get a Job In Biotech so far and haven’t already subscribed, I highly encourage you to do so now! If you join below I’ll also provide you with a resume template modeled after my own resume in a few days! (Don’t worry – if you already subscribed you will be getting the resume template soon too if you haven’t already!)
Now let’s move on to making the YOU part of your application come to the forefront with your cover letter!
