What a Recruiter Sees in Your Resume

Your Resume at a Glance

We would like to share some advice that we have given people about their resumes to pass the “glance test”. As recruiters we look at resumes all day long. Because we make our living matching talent to incredible start-up companies, we pay extra attention to resumes and often dig deep to make sure we don’t miss anything. However, many of the hiring managers we work with are busy, incredibly busy! They are wearing many hats at any given time and looking at a resume is just one of them. Imagine one of the hiring managers finishing up a 12-hour day back at the office. All they want to do is go home, they are tired and they still need to look at an inbox full of resumes. The reality is that your resume may only get a glance from them. They may give it just a few seconds to scan the first few jobs to see what you have to offer them. You need to pass the “glance test”.

There are three basic things I have found that must be addressed in your resume during the glance test.

What do you do?

Who do you do it for?

How do you get the job done?

Seems basic right? You would be surprised how many resumes we see every day that do not answer these three basic questions. We expect that you brag about your relevant achievements and successes! There are many great articles written out there on what to have in your resume, how to format your resume and more. All of them are great and often give solid advice however these are the three things we look for when reviewing a resume.

What do you do? Don’t assume that a recruiter or hiring manager will know your company or exactly what you did. Tell them. Do you work in sales, technology, marketing, operations? What exactly do you do there? Work in a certain type of engineering or with a certain sales or marketing software? Let us know and be very specific.

Who do you do it for? We are not asking you to give up your contacts on your resume, but just like before, don’t assume anyone knows who your spectators are for your job! Do you sell to C-level on the marketing side, how about the IT side or even Line of Business, SMB, B2B, Corporate Accounts? Do you work with and listen to the backend developers, the UX designers, the Full-stack engineers, are you your own boss? Do you specialize in SEM, SEO, branding, B2B, B2C, communicate with the growth manager or the marketing and operations manager? Put it in the resume!

How well do you get the job done? OK, let’s get real here. Every hiring manager we have worked with has asked us to provide awesome talent. We’ve never once been asked to find an average or below average performing person, not one time. It’s OK to professionally brag about how good you are! Are you the top person at your current organization? Out of many? Let us know. Are you above quota quarter over quarter? What percentage? Are you increasing the awareness of your social media? If so by how much? Have sales increased since you launched your marketing campaign? What percentage have they increased? How long have you been in the engineering industry? What languages have you worked with (programming or coding)? Do you have any applications that you have built? How many have you made? Give us some tangible metrics and let us know how good you are!

There are many things to include in your resume, however in our experience, addressing these three questions in your resume will help get you noticed!