As a techie, I never understood why marketing people were getting paid so much to describe the product we built, until I understood what they do. With that said, here are some tips on how to write your resume like it’s a marketing brochure, not just a laundry list of skills.
Now that I have my own company, I understand why marketing is important. In short, it tells the world what our company does, how we can help solve people’s problems, and therefore why they should hire us and/or buy our products. I wish I had known this years ago, because it would have given me great insight on how to market myself when looking for a new job.
Just as a marketing department writes documents outlining the value statement of a company’s products and services, we as individuals write resumes outlining our value statement to potential employers. Just as the quality and effectiveness of marketing materials help sell the company’s products, the quality and effectiveness of our resumes help sell us.
That being said, here are some tips that can help you promote yourself effectively through your resume:
1. Target your resume at the specific job you’re trying to land. 2. It’s okay to have multiple versions of your resume tailored to specific types of jobs, as long as they’re accurate, honest, and consistent about dates, locations, and general responsibilities. 3. When highlighting the technologies you are aware of, describe them in relation to other technologies and business goals, such as “Increased company website-based sales by 42% by improving shopping cart functionality with PHP and MySQL” . 4. Highlight your results, not just your credentials. 5. Describe how you can provide value to potential employers. 6. Use a distinctive resume look and feel to help separate your resume from the pack. 7. Include the logos of the companies you worked with on your resume, it adds color and distinction. 8. Feel free to remove outdated technologies that no one cares about anymore, unless you have a specific reason to include them. 9. Consider including a short testimonial or two from past employers. 10. Describe the business impact of your technical successes, this helps demonstrate that you have an understanding of the business, not just the technology. 11. Be specific; that is, use statements like “Improved system performance by 37%” instead of statements like “Help increase system performance.” 12. Use strong action verbs, like “Improved” as used above, instead of more passive expressions like “Help” or “Experienced with.” 13. Ask a friend to look at your resume for 10 seconds and then tell you what they remember. This 10 seconds is all the time you’ll get (if you’re lucky) from potential employers reviewing your resume. 14. Make it easy on the eyes. That is, defined lines, more bullets than text, centered on the page, easy to read and to the point. 15. Don’t be humble, but be honest and don’t exaggerate.
The common theme contained in the above list of tips is that if you want your resume to be on the desk and not in the trash, it must engage the reader, describe your value proposition, be visually appealing . , and be directed towards the job you are trying to secure.
If you have any questions about your IT career, please email me at eric@ManagerMechanics.com or find me on Twitter at @EricPBloom.
Until next time, work hard, work smart, and keep growing.
Read more from Eric Bloom’s Your IT Career blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Eric on Twitter at @EricPBloom. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-to, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.
This story, “15 Tips on How to Write Your Resume Like a Marketing Brochure” was originally published by ITworld.
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