When I started writing What my Sherpa taught me about Teams, I had to get really clear on who my audience was. This is a key aspect of writing a book and after some consideration, I established that my audience was project team members. That is not to say that other people would not enjoy the book or benefit from the teachings, anybody in a workplace would gain valuable knowledge from the teachings. However, to keep the tense consistent, the language uniform and the message flowing it was beneficial to have a specific audience in mind. The reason I chose these individuals was because projects are unique in that their teams need to build connection quickly, they are constantly developing and reinventing themselves in a way that a lot of other workplaces teams aren't.
The importance of writing for your audience is never so true as when you are writing a resume. The trap many fall into is they believe that audience is the hiring manager. While ultimately, that is who will be reading it, there is no guarantee they will be the first, second or even the third person to read your resume. This trap of writing a highly technical resume is one that engineering specialists fall into and it means they often will not get past the first round of cuts. Neither a computer nor a recruiter is a technical specialist. They are both looking for keywords in your resume and if they don’t find enough of those keywords, it will not be progressed to the next stage of the process. If it's too hard for them to see the link to the job, if it's too onerous to understand the content of the resume, it will be put into the scrap heap - a sad but true reality.
You may be able to do the job very well, but if it isn’t easy for the first reader to see that, then you will be cut out of the process before you even get started. “It is not fair,” I hear you cry, however, being somebody who's had to look at over 300 applications for one role, I can see how this happens. The concept of making it easy for the reader is one that authors, journalists and bloggers are familiar with. You don't want to lose your reader because the concepts are too difficult, you're waffling too much or it's cumbersome to follow. This same is exponentially truer with your resume. Make it easy for the person who's reading it to see why you are good for the job. Use dot points, reduce the amount of block text, highlight words if needed. An application is a sales pitch so make sure it is easy for them to put you into the “yes” pile rather than the “maybe” or the “no” pile.
The only role that your resume has, the only reason you're writing it is to get you an interview. So, look at your resume and dissect the advertisement. What are they looking for? Like I said, the recruiter, the first person looking at your work is unlikely to be a technical expert. All they're doing is matching the advertisement to the resume. If you do the same, you will get an interview. It is simple and only complicated by the fact that you don't know how many other people have applied with the same skills. Matching your resume to the advertisement and writing in a clear manner will place you in the top 10% of applicants for the role. I guarantee that if you're not already, implementing this practice will double the number of interviews that you're getting invited to.
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