American Job Advocate

When you write your resume (with or without advice and professional help) who is your target audience? Who are you trying to satisfy?

First of all, youre not writing your resume to satisfy yourself. For that matter, youre not writing it to satisfy any expert the author of the resume book you just read, or the recruiter youre working with, or your career guidance counselor, or your cousin Fred who is a human resources manager or even a professional resume writer.


You are writing for a particular kind of reader: a potential employer. And if youre like most of us, you make some very, very optimistic assumptions about that reader. You are certain that your reader is eager to find the finest person for the job. Your reader, you are sure is going to read the important things in your resume and that his or her eye will be drawn to all of those clever formatting tricks youve used (columns, underlining, different fonts boldfacing italics, strong verbs, skills, numbers, results, etc.).

But youd better take off the rose-colored glasses. Your resume has a better than 98% chance of ending up in the garbage can (real or virtual).

Here are Seven characteristics of the psychology of the typical resume reader:

1. Resume readers are some of the smartest and most skeptical readers in the world; They know that at least half of what they read consists of lies, exaggerations half-truths and semantic and formatting tricks. They dont accept anything at face value. Remember, the typical resume reader sees literally thousands; they know every trick in the book by now.


2. Most readers are in a bad mood, not a happy mood of eager expectancy. Theyve got 300 resumes to read and nobody is giving them an extra penny to carefully peruse each one. They are rushed for time, annoyed at having to read yet another resume, and hostile rather than sympathetic. Reading yet another resume is a burden that is keeping them from there attention to what they consider much, much more important matters.

3. Therefore, the typical resume reader is looking for a quick and convincing reason to throw out yours. Some will even discard it if they dont like the envelope or the way the email looks. Some will read only the resume and not the cover letter, or vice-versa. And they are unwilling to open up a zip file. You know how annoying it is to get an email that requires you to open up several files? For the resume reader it is triply annoying.

4; They are unimpressed by the latest resume fad. For a long time it was (and to a great extent still is) verbs. Since a verb is an action word, we think the reader will be impressed by lots of great verbs. Theyre not. The latest craze is numbers. Youve got to have lots of quantitative data in your resume, or no 1 will take you seriously. I see resumes now that are nothing but a bewildering array of numbers, and I do not believe it is any more impressive to the typical resume reader than is a bewildering array of verbs.

5. None will read in detail that we all know; All will skim-read for about Twenty seconds or less! They are looking for certain information FIRST to see if the resume is worth reading in more detail. Usually they look for job titles and academic degrees first. Some look first for gaps in employment, some for certain skills, some for length of employment. Each reader has his or her own top priority to scan for first. And even if they read it in detail, theyll give it to Five other people who will skim it.


6. Most readers know that there company is in no hurry to hire. Even if they are interested in you, they will take there time responding. They are not interested in calling you back right away, even if they like your resume.


7. They are not interested in your personal objectives for your life and your career. They are only interested in how you can help there company solve its dilemmas and achieve its goals thats why they hire. But they are totally unaware of your unique strengths and value that you can potentially bring to the organization. Thats because in most resumes, the persons unique strengths and potential value are buried somewhere in the middle of the resume and not written for a skimmer/reader.

So, when you write your resume (or have anyone else help you write it), keep the above characteristics in mind. You have got to give your reader 1) what they are looking for FIRST, and 2) what you want them to find FIRST. That means that you cannot emphasize everything equally in your resume. Youve got to write it so that they see there priorities and yours instantly. Make sure to keep that in mind, and youll have a much better chance of having your resume taken seriously.