Creating a Resume That Will Stand out

 

resume

As marketing majors, most of us know that the most important thing we can sell is ourselves. We need to talk the talk and walk the walk that our future employers want to see.

But even before we can do that, we submit a single sheet of paper that can make or break our opportunity to carry out the rest. So yeah, that puts a lot of pressure on one sheet. That’s why it’s so important to make sure our resumes reflect our personal brands just as we would like them to.

According to Business Insider, it takes recruiters an average of “six seconds before they make the initial ‘fit’ or ‘no fit’ decision” on candidates based on a resume. Given this information, it is crucial that there is something on your resume that immediately makes you stand out. Something that, even after recruiters look through hundreds of those sheets of paper, they’re going to remember about you.

I feel like most of us probably know all the basic rules of making a resume by now: always double check your spelling, try to keep it to one page, and put your most recent and important accomplishments towards the top. If you don’t know the basics yet, the Fisher website is a great resource for you to begin creating. But while these are the fundamentals of resume-building and are obviously important, I’m not here to give you the same exact advice that’s already available to you.

So here’s my bit about resumes that might not always be in conventional wisdom: be different. Don’t get caught up trying to follow the exact format of the “perfect resume template” you downloaded from the internet. Especially if you’re a marketing or media management major. A phrase we hear time and time again in the marketing world is “breaking through the clutter,” and that’s exactly what you won’t do if you’re using a cookie cutter template.

So what is my advice to you exactly? Number one: brand yourself. Make yourself a logo. Give your resume a color scheme. Use a legible font, but stray away from Times New Roman. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box: use infographics and icons to quickly communicate your information. For, like we said before, you really only have about 6 seconds to make an impression.

Thanks to technology, we are in an amazing new age of interactivity and design. And honestly, nobody is better at it than our generation. By making our resumes resemble what we would design for a website, we’re proving to future employers that we have an edge that older candidates don’t necessarily have, even if they might have more experience than us.

Recently, I was inspired to redesign my resume by this video created by Nathan Bolger and Adobe Creative Cloud

For more creative inspiration, check out this site with tons of beautifully-designed resumes

Take with it what you will, and I wish you the best in your creative journey.

 

Posted in Career advice, Personal Branding, Tips & Advice, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , .

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