Every employer wants to hire the best employees, and resumes are your first and somewhat the last opportunity to stand out from your peers and make it past the screening round. Hiring managers and recruiters look at resumes for an average of only six to seven seconds each, so it’s important to make every second worthwhile. A strong resume can help you stand out from the crowd, but a weak resume can remove you from the running. Professionally written resumes are not only good for landing an interview, but they can also boost your earning potential by 7%.
So how do you make your resume stand out without overdoing it? Diego Granados, Product Manager at LinkedIn & ex-Microsoft & Global Product Mentor, shares the key steps to build a resume that can help you land your dream job .
'This is the resume I used to get my job at Microsoft in 2019. While it's certainly not perfect, there are a few things that helped me in the process and I'll show them to you, using colors.'
-Diego Granados
Don't worry about searching for fancy, colorful, complex templates. A black&white plain old boring template works.
Recruiters & hiring managers care about your accomplishments and about you, not about the colors you chose for your resume (unless you are a designer or something similar).
Most of my accomplishments were written using as a base the X-Y-Z formula (shared by Google recruiters)
"Accomplished [X], as measured by [Y], by doing [Z]"
Follow it as close as possible, but don't be afraid to put your own style into it (as long as you share your X,Y & Z).
-Start every accomplishment with a verb in the past tense.
-Strong Verbs (Led) >>>> Soft Verbs (Assisted). Refer to the pink underlined words in the above picture.
-Try to use verbs relevant to the role. For PM I used: Led, Designed, Researched, Prioritized, etc.
Notice how I don't have a "skills section" full of Product Manager keywords like "cross-functional", "leadership", "prioritisation", and "Roadmap"?
The keywords in blue are embedded in my accomplishments. I'm showing the context of how I used those skills to help customers, my team, and or/the organization. I took these keywords from the job descriptions I wanted to apply to.
Not every accomplishment has to have an impact, but try to add as many as you can. Impact shows that:
Anyone can "complete a project in time", but not everyone can "complete a project in time by doing xxxxx, and having an impact of yyyyy". If you struggle to find the impact, think about this:
- What is it that without YOU it wouldn't have been possible? What did it cause (impact)? How did you measure what happened?
I write down all the technical skills that I know and can show some 'proof' (a test, a score, etc.). Many of these are taken from the job descriptions I was applying to.
A few things to remember:
BONUS: While I worked on my resume for a while (and there's still A LOT of room for improvement), what got me my recent jobs was the fact that I networked a lot.
Don't underestimate the power of networking.
So, there you have it: The proven tips to build an impactful resume. Need more advice on career? Connect with our mentors by booking a session.
Authors Bio: Diego Granados is currently a Sr. Product Manager at LinkedIn. After working for 2 years at Cisco as a Product Manager on device tracking over wireless networks, Diego then joined Microsoft in 2019 to work as a Product Manager on AI&ML. Diego is currently a Sr. PM at LinkedIn and loves to mentor aspiring and new Product Managers, as well as create content on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube for more than 100,000 followers combined.
.jpg)
