Does your resume have a headline?
“City unsure why the sewer smells”
Seriously? Some headlines are unintentionally funny. Others are guides to the information included in the article.
Resume headlines perform the same function. The reader checks out the headline. She sees “Supply Chain Executive”. The thought immediately enters the reader’s mind that the information that follows concerns the background of a person who is a Supply Chain Executive.
She keeps reading, confirming or denying in her head whether the information in the resume matches the headline. If it does, the reader jumps quickly to consider how or whether she can use that person.
If there is no headline, the reader has to wade through all those words to figure out what the person wants. What are the chances that happens?
Create a headline that matches what you want. It is easy to adjust the resume headline to match the specific job you are applying for. Job titles for the same job can vary so just change the resume headline to match the specific job. If you’ve created a solid resume that supports all the possible title variations then it’s simple.
If the background and the headline don’t match, we have a problem. What if the headline says, “Supply Chain Executive” but the individual was actually a hair dresser? The resume would make no sense.
But sometimes folks want to change careers. I worked with a design engineer who went to University of Michigan to get his MBA in Marketing. No one would take him seriously. So I redesigned his resume. Design engineers in technical businesses interact with Marketing all the time. So it makes sense that we could redefine his accomplishments using words that Marketing people commonly use. We demonstrated the relationship between design engineering and marketing so that the reader understood the connection. Finally he was taken seriously and found a job!
By changing the headline we influenced the reader’s expectations. By changing the words used to describe the accomplishments we translated those same engineering accomplishments into “marketing”.
We created an impression that ran through the entire resume that positively influenced the outcome. All from words. Isn’t that amazing?
Everyone deserves a resume that supports their career goals. Check out The Interview Doctor’s free resource, “Avoid the Top 5 Resume Mistakes” to boost your resume!