At Morton, we’re always happy when we can give back to the community and share some of our knowledge. In a meetup group called ‘Refactoring Tech’ on October 19th, a few team members carried out a resume workshop in support of a non-profit organization.
Our goal was simple
To show the power of a well-crafted and attractive resume that grips the attention of a recruiter or hiring manager. During the workshop, we broke down resumes into the good, bad, and ugly – while explaining each in detail.
Attendees gained valuable insight into how recruiters scan resumes and pick out specific keywords, skills, and attributes. We also demonstrated how to run searches with Boolean strings to give attendees a bit of perspective about how their resume looks from the employer side of Monster, and Dice.
Resume formatting was an important discussion point during the workshop. Our team emphasized how to make a resume stand out in a 30-second scan and gave tips on tailoring past work experience to make it achievement-focused rather than reading just like a job description.
Details about related personal projects are always a powerful addition to any resume!
A few other important takeaways included
- Don’t Undersell Your Abilities: You’re not an ‘aspiring web designer.’ You are a web designer. Employers don’t have time to try and figure out what you can and can’t do.
- Skip The Graphics: Photos, graphs, charts, and fancy borders are not necessary for a professional resume. They can be distracting at best and a turn-off to an employer at worse.
- Detail Responsibilities: Don’t be shy to show off your talents. Give statistics, figures, and concrete details about projects you accomplished and successes. Hard stats are always better than a vague description.
Of course, no workshop is complete without a little fun. Attendees got to see some not-so-professional examples of work, personal emails, and file names that the resumes were saved as. The importance of professional contact information, correspondence, and file names were emphasized as well.
Would you like to put your finely tuned resume into the hands of job seekers who are ready to hire?
If so, we at Morton can help. Check out our job portal to submit resumes and learn how we can help you connect with the right organizations looking for top-tier talent. Call us today at 804-290-4272 to get started.
