Help the recruiter to WANT to read your résumé - A Case in Point for being 'memorably relevant'.

Click…whoosh.

That was the sound of your résumé hitting the trash bin. And, as is usually the case in the post-digital age -- you will never know why you got binned, and you will never hear back regarding your application.

The great vortex of do-not-reply job applications is a modern day recruitment crime. However, it is not as great a crime as the résumé with FAR TOO MUCH information in it.

Job hunters – take heed: don’t be guilty of this easily avoidable crime.

Having reviewed more résumés than can be imagined in this short post, let me tell you the truth: Most résumés do not get read that closely. The person taking first glance of your résumé is on autopilot, and they are most likely:

• Under (or over) caffeinated
• Extraordinarily time-poor (or pressure-rich)
• Drowning in a sea of electronic files (aren’t we all)
• Being slowly, painfully attacked by BULLET POINTS

A résumé reader is skimming your headlines -- much like a person skims the news. They simply do not have the capacity to care about every story.

It is your job / the job of an effective résumé to catch them before they STOP caring. If your résumé is crowded, over-worked and confusingly complex, there is only one word they will think of: NEXT.

In short:

• If you use TOO MANY BULLET POINTS
• You are KILLING your résumé
• You are NOT ENGAGING your reader
• And this is not a good thing
• Notice how you wanted that list to end after the third point?

So what is the right amount of bullet points?

• Three, ideally
• Four, in a pinch
• If you REALLY need five, then okay – but remember this:
• Three is better*
• Five is permissible
• Six is starting to get ugly
• Seven is pushing your luck
• Eight is downright CRIMINAL

When you review the content of your résumé it is important to ask yourself:

• Have you described the most relevant aspects of your position?
• Can you reduce your key points to only three or five so that the reader can get the strongest sense of your role in the quickest time?
• Could you group your points by common theme? You can have more than one sentence per bullet point, and compound sentences like this one can be very useful too.

See how you wanted that list to stop there as well too? Had I asked you eight questions in that list, could you remember them all? Would you even care to answer them?

Exactly my case (in point).

A résumé should give you the opportunity to expand on your key bullet points IN PERSON. It should not negate the need for an interview, and if it comes across like a procedure manual – it is high time for a revamp.

When you:

• Create limited bullet points specific to the job at hand, you:
• Highlight your relevant experience
• And make yourself easy to remember

“Memorably relevant” will get you out of the bin and into the yes pile. And that is exactly where you deserve to be!

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