Standing out from the crowd on paper will help you to schedule more interviews and have a greater opportunity to show how you meet the company standards before you even speak with the Hiring Manager. Is your resume up to snuff?

Imagine for a moment that you are a Hiring Manager at XYZ Corporation.  Yesterday you posted an ad online for an open Administrator position and today you find 200 resumes and cover letters strewn across your desk, and your voicemail reports that you have 75 new messages.  You only have time to interview 10 candidates over the next few days, in which time you know that you will receive another several rounds of calls and resumes.  How do you decide who to call?

This scenario is happening right now all over the country.  As the job market dwindles and unemployment is on the rise, competition for available jobs is getting more aggressive and it is becoming more and more difficult to stand out from the pack.  Although it may not have seemed that important a few years ago, having a resume that stands out from the other stacks of paper is often the only way to get your foot in the door.

Chances are that the resumes the Hiring Manager receives that take too long to read, that have grammatical errors in the first 1/3 of the page and that don’t include enough information related to the industry will all end up filed in a big folder marked “NO”.  What is left for them to look over then?  A much smaller number of resumes to review from people who might actually be a good fit.  As the candidate, it is your job to make sure that your resume fits into the small pile of possibilities.  So, how do you do that?

Tell them who you are

Read more in Employment
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This may seem like a no-brainer, but as someone who has been on the hiring side of this process before I can honestly say that there are people out there who forget to put their name on their resume.  Or maybe it’s there, but they put it on the back-side or bottom of the page – regardless, if someone has to hunt for your name and number then they probably won’t look at your resume long enough to find it.

Make sure that your name is in bold at the top of the page.  Follow this with your address, phone number and e-mail address so that the person booking the interviews knows how to find you.  But, don’t overdo it.  If you have a home phone line and a cell phone, only list the one number that you are most likely to be reached at. Invest in voicemail for when you aren’t there so that you can give someone a call back if you miss them.