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TELL YOUR STORY

It's a given: Expertly crafted resumes that draw a rich self-portrait contribute to a successful job search, leading to new career opportunities. The resume provides a perfect canvas for introverts to shine and bring their unique qualifications and hard-earned skills into the spotlight. Working quietly behind the scenes, you can dig deep into your experience, unearth your achievements, and dust off your industry knowledge and personal qualities.

Introverts tend to feel somewhat uncomfortable blowing their own horn both in life and in a resume. Therefore, they might overlook accomplishments or tasks that deserve applause. But in the current competitive and innovative economy where results matter, you must prove to employers that you are a high performer or risk losing a great opportunity. So don't be afraid to trumpet your legacy of experiences and achievements in an eye-catching script on your resume. Your purpose is not to brag, but to reveal just how you can bring value to an organization. A resume that puts your best foot forward builds deserved self-confidence and reinforces your personal worth.

In this chapter, we will develop strategies that portray you as a results-oriented professional through your resume. You won't need to magically become an extrovert to make this happen.

Five Resume Trends

Count to six. This is how long many recruiters take to review your resume, according to a recent survey by Ladders, an online job-matching service.¹ The reality that all your hard work is boiled down to such a quick, offhand perusal can be difficult to imagine. This approach to resume review can vary depending on the employer and company hiring procedures, but your resume has to stand out from the crowd. Whether it's six seconds or one minute, the resume must always shout, “Hey! I'm here, and you need me!” in the first glance. The speed of review has transformed the traditional resume into a document that is tighter, shorter, and leaner.

Considering the time employers allot to each candidate, how do you get their attention? Employers are looking for five basic trends, so incorporating these into your resume is the best way to catch their eye and convince them you are the optimal candidate. These five trends can be summarized as follows:

1. Achievements: While employers quickly review your position title along with your basic responsibilities and tasks, what they primarily look for is results. Achievements that demonstrate outcomes, innovation, and problem-solving can spell out how you add value and exemplify high performance.
2. Personal branding: What differentiates you from every other candidate? Personal branding gives employers a snapshot of who you are by highlighting your accomplishments, contributions, talent, passion, and vision. By incorporating branding into your resume, you show employers what makes you unique.
3. Short-and-sweet descriptions: Keep your descriptions brief and to the point. Think shorter paragraphs and tighter sentences.
4. Keywords: These are specific words and phrases that help employers quickly evaluate if you are the best fit among the multitude of other candidates. Therefore, the strategic use of such terms throughout your resume can be an important factor in getting through initial screenings. Today, many employers use computer sourcing and applicant tracking systems (ATS) that track candidates by keywords, so the frequency and choice of keywords is significant.
5. Visual presentation: Technology has made it possible to add some punch to your resume with color and design elements like charts. Subtle details like blue lines or gray headings can add energy to a black-and-white page. Alternatively, if you prefer a more traditional format, color is not required to create a winning look.

If you feel your introverted voice of apprehension coming through on any of these trends, don't fret. I will incorporate these into my discussion as I lead you through key points of writing a powerful resume.

Start With a Strategy

Take advantage of your ability to concentrate in order to reach your resume's starting line: focusing on your industry/field and target audience. What specific experiences, talents, achievements, and personal qualities lead to success in your field? Answers to these questions will help identify keywords and build a strong foundation for your resume. The following examples show professional areas paired with functions directly related to their industries, as well as personal qualities that often define success in those fields.

Sales

Related functions: Expanding territory, exceeding quota, networking

Personal qualities: Enthusiastic, gregarious, competitive

Senior Executive

Related functions: Business development, innovation, leadership

Personal qualities: Decisive, ambitious, powerful

Teacher

Related functions: Learning environment, cultural diversity, curriculum

Personal qualities: Compassionate, creative, accepting

Biomedical Engineer

Related functions: Data analysis, thermal systems, prototype

Personal qualities: Perseverance, analytical, inventive

Now make a list of terms that fit your personal career experience and your job target. You will be able to use these in your headline and summary as well as your job descriptions. If you are a recent graduate, draw from experiences such as internships, leadership activities, or classroom projects. Reentering the workforce? Draw from activities with value such as volunteering, serving on community boards, taking professional courses, or training.

Achievements

Your dynamic work deserves an equally dynamic resume. Showcasing action-packed results through your admirable achievements is a big trend and an essential component of today's powerful resume.

What have you done so far in your career that speaks to your talents and skills? How have your special projects or initiatives produced significant results? When asking yourself these questions, consider what answers will convince a prospective employer that you are an attractive recruit.

Review your self-assessment chart from Chapter 2 and pull out signature, singular work accomplishments. You may also want to supplement the list with additional work achievements that you may have left off your initial list.

Some examples of compelling accomplishments might be:

Initiating and implementing a project, process, or procedure

Introducing new ideas, strategies, and techniques

Generating a productive solution to a problem

Streamlining costs or reducing waste

Increasing profits or revenue

Expanding programs

Securing funding

Creating innovation

Your soul may struggle with tooting your own horn and giving expression to the full scope of your achievements. Overcoming this reserve, however, is crucial. Otherwise you will miss a golden opportunity to promote yourself, and an employer may fail to notice a great potential employee. Using your natural ability to focus, surmount your hesitancy, and let your achievements represent an important chapter in the story of your career. Believe that you matter and what you have achieved is significant.

Accomplishment Descriptions: Before and After

Sheila is a high-performing introvert who almost concealed one of the most notable stories of her accomplishment. Once she revealed the details, her description was entirely transformed.

Sheila works for a marketing firm at which she designs and delivers social media campaigns to a variety of clients. One of her proudest accomplishments was the success of a social media campaign that she designed and delivered to an online clothing company. Her efforts were so effective, and the campaign so successful, that the client decided to totally replace their traditional marketing strategies with social media. Best of all, the client retained Sheila for future social media campaigns. This talented woman nearly sidestepped an ideal opportunity to tell the story of her fine work and the outcome of increasing business for her firm.

Before: Implemented successful B2C social media program.

After: Designed and implemented successful B2C social media program, resulting in client dropping traditional advertising campaigns and expanding engagement with marketing firm.

An achievement doesn't always have to be quantified, but leaving out desirable and tangible results may prove to be a fatal flaw. Without clear evidence, a prospective employer may have missed Sheila's unique ability to think creatively and build strong relationships that generate more business.

Scope-Contribution-Outcome (SCO)

SCO is a formula I developed to help my clients write standout achievement statements through a simple step-by-step process. It breaks down as follows:

Scope: Overview and breadth of project, task, or initiative

Contribution: Your actions

Outcome: The results that you achieved

The two following examples demonstrate how applying this formula can bring out a deeper level of facts and particulars to a person's accomplishments.

Director of Development

Achievement: Directed organization's membership program.

Scope: 500 full museum memberships and 900 complimentary memberships.

Contribution: Managed program, improved member benefits, increased membership programs.

Outcome: Increased membership and program's revenue from $22,000 to $40,000 in two years.

Final achievement statement: Directed organization's membership program serving 500 full museum members and 900 complimentary members. Expanded and improved benefits and programs increasing membership revenue from $22,000 to $40,000 in just two years.

Graphic Artist

Achievement: Quickly assigned to a major corporate client by senior agency staff based on high performance.

Scope: Worked on small projects using digital images and 3D architectural design.

Contribution: Demonstrated his value with hard work and dedication.

Outcome: Given advanced responsibility to design and create packaging, advertisements, and sales materials for a top pharmaceutical firm.

Final achievement statement: Hired by ad agency to handle smaller projects using digital images and virtual 3D architectural design. Talent and strong performance quickly led to higher-level project of designing and creating packaging, advertisements, and sales materials for a top pharmaceutical firm.

Now try out SCO on one of your achievements. Remember to always start your statement with a strong action verb.

Branding

To succeed in today's innovation and gig economy, you might look at yourself as a product. This means you have to find the best way to sell yourself. For an introvert, this is not the most appealing task, but you can begin your self-promotion with your resume by creating a personal brand that is uniquely you and catches the prospective employer's eye. If viewing yourself as a “brand” seems cold, objectifying, and impersonal (as it will to introverts), consider the concept of resume branding as an introduction to the employer and a way to display the fuller story of your career. This perspective will help you conjure up your quiet energy and fuel your intense concentration to craft a powerfully written resume. To get you started in building your brand, let's look at a step-by-step process for writing a headline and summary.

Recent graduates or women reentering the workforce don't need to worry about branding and writing headlines. The goal is to gain experience and credibility, keeping track of your accomplishments as you go along. Similarly, if your field is academia or research, you are likely to have a CV (curriculum vitae), which doesn't require a branding statement. Your accomplishments will be reflected in your research publications and presentations.

Headline

An energetic and well-composed headline quickly heralds who you are, defines your job target, and signals what it is that makes you unique. Most important, it quickly establishes your brand. Think of the headline as setting the scene for what's to come in the most impressive parts of your resume: experiences, accomplishments, and educational background.

You already worked through your achievements, so keep that list handy. Now pull out your list of personal characteristics and skills. Consider adding to these lists specific skills relevant in your field.

Choose a general position title that fits your career background as well as your target employer. Then consider which strategy you believe to be the optimal, most dynamic choice for capturing the prospective employer's eye. As a rule, the best attention-getters include an overview of recognized accomplishments or skill sets in demand by the target employer.

Here are three examples of powerful headlines. Although each differs in style, they all provide the employer a quick glimpse of the individual as a person and valuable asset.

Human Resource Leader and Change Manager

Headline features: Simple and to the point. You can add more information later in your summary.

Ambitious and innovative pharmaceutical sales rep consistently recognized for exceeding sales goals and performance standards.

Headline features: Highlights personal qualities and accomplishments of interest to employers in corporate sales.

Business Director and Consultant Leadership/Project Management/Process Improvement

Headline features: Includes multiple position titles and key management functions that would attract a targeted employer.

Summary

Most headlines are followed by a short summary, sometimes referred to as a profile. The summary supports your headline, providing career highlights, achievements, expertise, and personal characteristics that have brightly colored your success and established your brand. This is your value proposition in four to five sentences.

An easy way to break down some of the most important components of your experience is to separate them into categories and then use that information to craft a summary that supports your brand.

Career highlights: Years of experience (if relevant), knowledge, and expertise

Key atrengths and talents

Achievements

Personal characteristics

Let's take another look at our talented HR professional and see how she integrated these core components in her summary.

Human Resource Leader and Change Manager

Compassionate leader with track record of exceeding workforce goals by focusing on business priorities. Recognized for outstanding performance and awarded highest employee honor (NOVA) by the CEO for outstanding leadership to “People Transformation” across the enterprise resulting in an increase of 10 percent employee satisfaction.

Her core components break down as follows:

Career highlight: History of exceeding workforce goals

Key strength: Leadership

Achievements: NOVA award and increase in employee satisfaction

Personal characteristics: Compassionate

Now let's look at two other approaches to summaries, one by an IT professional and one by a teacher, that include the core competencies. Instead of including all of the elements in a single paragraph, these highlight certain competencies by separating them out in a different format.

Senior IT Professional

Innovative technology leader with cross-domain experience, recognized for delivering ground-up software and new process solutions. Adept at bridging the communication gap between customers, management, and technology staff. Talent for producing forward-thinking design and conceptualizing long-term vision.

Key skills

Technology is a field in which specific skills like software and process design are extremely important. Including a separate section for skills along with the summary paragraph incorporates keywords while giving the employer a feel for the quality and strength of your technology abilities. In addition to assessing this candidate's computer competencies, a prospective employer quickly learns that this applicant has cross-domain experience, plus skills as a creative designer and problem-solver. This candidate also highlights an ability to communicate with people at all levels—another plus to employers.

Elementary School Teacher

Enthusiastic and resourceful teacher dedicated to creating an effective learning environment that meets students' social, emotional, and cognitive needs, and strives to help students achieve their full potential.

Designed and developed innovative curriculum to accommodate different learning styles and levels.

Created and introduced lesson unit on multicultural awareness adopted as model learning unit in all Millersville elementary school districts.

Adept at providing classroom structure, discipline, and support to help children succeed academically and socially.

Readily establishes trusting relationships with students, teachers, administrators, and parents.

Elected as faculty representative to Millersville School Board.

This educator accompanies her summary with bulleted statements to describe her philosophy and approach to teaching; these bullets also list two important achievements (“elected as faculty representative” and “introduced lesson unit on multicultural awareness”) that make her stand out as a potential job candidate in her field.

Short-and-Sweet Descriptions

In your quest to do full justice to your experience, you might find yourself getting carried away with too many adjectives, taking the reader down the rabbit hole of endlessly long sentences. Resist this temptation, and give the prospective employer what they really want: a down-to-earth feel for what you do on a daily basis. If you are a consultant or business owner, customers and clients need a reliable understanding of your services and how they can use them.

With the constant barrage of information from cyberspace, modern-day employers primarily focus on your results and achievements. So, avoid cluttering your resume; use space economically to describe the most basic tasks in your job description. Before you start to write, clear your mind of the mass of material your psyche wants to relay, and edit this down to what you know is most relevant to the audience. Then organize your resume by crafting a clear, easily digested description of your key responsibilities and tasks. Once you have written a description of a job, follow it up with your bullet list of achievements. Finally, always begin a description with a strong action verb, and avoid the phrase “duties/responsibilities include.”

Here are some examples of powerful, short-and-sweet sentences that highlight a key responsibility:

Lead and manage team of six account representatives in developing dynamic partnerships with more than fifty hospitals and cancer centers across Maryland.

Assessed business requirements and defined and implemented solutions capitalizing on both offshore and onshore resources.

Conceptualized and wrote previews and columns for NHL, MLB, and college sports released to national and international outlets.

Keywords

As you craft your resume, keep in mind that employers and recruiters are using computer sourcing and tracking systems these days to rapidly scan resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Keywords are the specific words or phrases employers use to find the right candidate among the multitudes of applicants. To ensure that you are noticed in the whirling world of recruiting, your resume should brim with these industry buzzwords.

Let's take a look at an effective list of keywords provided by a registered hospital nurse in the skills section of her resume:

Emergency Procedures

Life Support

ICU

CCU

Intravenous Therapy

Care Plan Administration

Charting and Documenting

Community Health Issues

Physician Relations

One of the best strategies for identifying keywords is to peruse job postings on job websites and LinkedIn as these are often loaded with industry-specific buzzwords. Save or print out three similar job postings. As you read through the job descriptions, you will notice a pattern of similar keywords, providing clues to which keywords you should incorporate into your resume. Using word clouds like Wordle.net or TagCrowd.com is another fun, visual way to find elusive keywords in job descriptions. Simply copy and paste a job description into the word cloud, and a cloud of words appears in a colorful design, giving greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the posting. Jobscan is a new and excellent tool for resume optimization.

Education and Other Valuable Categories

Listing your degrees, majors, and educational institutions is essential, but don't stop there. If you are a recent bachelor or master's degree graduate, consider listing coursework, a research project, or a senior capstone project that's relevant to your job target. You can also include scholarships awarded and special honors. GPA can be a sensitive issue for some, but if you are proud of yours and consider it a major accomplishment, proudly display it under the education category.

If you have been out of school for five or more years, the education heading and supportive information should appear toward the end of your resume. Employers are most interested in what you are doing currently, so experience should be one of the first categories they see on your resume. Those who earned an advanced degree (MBA, RN, PhD, JD, etc.) should include the degree initials next to their name.

If you are a recent PhD grad looking for career options beyond academia, include on your resume the specific presentations and publications relevant to your job target. This eliminates the need to attach a complete, lengthy list from an academic CV.

The acceleration of change in the workplace will continue to demand lifelong learning, and you can demonstrate that you possess this enviable gem by polishing up and showing off any additional professional or academic training you have received. If you completed supplementary course-work or earned a professional certificate, these are assets and can be included under the “Education” heading, too. Gaining special training like Six Sigma or sharpening technology skills is yet another way to underline your success in remaining relevant and up-to-date in your field.

As an introvert, you may overlook the value of enriching your resume with other categories that could sway an employer in your direction. This might include a wide array of potential areas demonstrating your merits, from awards and professional affiliations, to community service, publications, and more.

Honors/Awards

If you are a student or recent graduate with a strong academic record or other valuable feathers in your cap, wave these achievements with both hands. Did you win an award for exceeding sales quotas, introduce a sustainability program, or come up with a strategy to streamline costs? Make it flash on your resume.

Professional Affiliations

Someone who regularly updates their professional knowledge and sharpens their skills understandably impresses employers. If you have served on a committee or been elected officer of a professional association, say so loud and clear. Don't make it difficult for employers to find phrases that clearly say, “I am a leader!”

Presentations/Public Speaking Engagements

Your ability to communicate ideas or knowledge in today's information-hungry workplace is in great demand. Use your resume to show employers you can promote your knowledge and organizational goals in front of groups—without fear of public speaking. If you have presented reports, workshops, or training either in person or via webinars, these activities are a big plus and should be added to your resume. Sure, you are an introvert, but never discount your public speaking skills.

Community Service/Volunteering

Examples of good citizenship reassure an employer that a prospective employee is a harmonious team player. Being active in your community increases the chances that you'll work collaboratively with colleagues and accept supervisory direction and advice. The workplace may own you from nine to five, but you represent the company in a real sense after hours. When you serve on community boards or volunteer for a worthy cause, you enhance your value to the organization.

Publications

Publishing professional articles or research studies in your field demonstrate your writing and editing talents, skills valued by many employers. It is also through publishing that your knowledge and expertise reaches a national audience, which is another appealing aspect to an employer. Online publications and blogs similarly increase your visibility and should be highlighted in this category, too.

Visual Presentation

Job hunters are often anxious for employers to notice their most impressive experience, so the resume's overall presentation does not receive much attention. Don't make this mistake; select an appealing format and eye-catching layout to make your resume stand out from the others.

Use these tips as guidelines to get you started. Just make sure you follow the two key rules of layout and format: design a resume that's visually appealing, and make sure it's easy to read.

Times New Roman works fine, but don't be timid about creating some flair with something more elegant. Several other fonts are appealing to the eye and convert well in attachments, such as Garamond, Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, and Calibri. Although these fonts are some of the most popular, there is no need to limit yourself to these styles. Particularly if your field is in the arts or visual design, try going with something fancier.

Use bold type and italics, varying font size, and uppercase lettering for accent, luring the attention of the reader to information that best reveals who you are. Take note, however, that italics are quirky to the eye, so avoid overuse, especially where you wish to provide detailed information.

Keep font size between 10 and 12 points, depending on the style of choice. Resist the temptation to use more than two fonts in any one resume, as the reader may become blurry-eyed, and therefore stop reading it entirely.

Consider adding a pop of color, if you are adventurous. Or go conservative: gray, light blue, or pale beige are examples of softer resume color choices. If you prefer to be bold, red can work well, too; alternatively, avoid shades too bright or too light. Try out color with one design element, such as main headings or shading for lines under headings or contact information. And of course there is nothing wrong with the conventional black and white.

Add a graph or chart for eye-catching results that draw attention to business, revenue, or sales growth. Your skills and special achievements can also stand out with a smart-looking graphic. Microsoft Word and a variety of other computer programs offer an attractive selection of user-friendly graph and chart templates.

Bold your name and main headings to give your resume visual definition.

Eliminate your street address if you are concerned about confidentiality and safety issues. Be sure to include your phone number and email address, and it's not a bad idea to include the URL to your LinkedIn profile.

Balance the information visually on the page, making sure you have enough white space versus text.

Bullets that pinpoint achievement and target skills are easy to follow, but keep in mind that overly lengthy lists can be exhausting to the eye and therefore counterproductive.

Be consistent in your approach to your visual layout so the reader can easily identify a pattern.

Avoid Word templates. They tend to restrict your creativity and fail to reflect your individuality. These templates can also make it difficult to make any format changes.

Before you release it for public view, always print out your resume, proofread carefully, and place yourself in the prospective employer's shoes: Is it visually inviting and reader friendly? Also, don't be penny wise and pound foolish; always use a higher grade of paper—never plain copy paper—as you will bring a hard copy of your resume to interviews, job fairs, and network meetings.

Send Your Resume Into Cyberspace

Once your resume is ready, you want to be sure the potential employer receives it. Keep the following suggestions in mind to ensure your resume reaches its destinations snag free.

Upload Your Resume

Most of today's employers require that you send your resume as an attachment to a specific email address or upload it to a website. This may require small edits or changes in format. Follow the employer's instructions on uploading your resume to ensure the document is readable. Save your resume in both Word and PDF files, and check to make sure it is loaded with job-related keywords.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

Employers in many large companies and recruiting firms now use time-saving and money-saving ATS or computer-sourcing systems to quickly scan resumes and identify top candidates. Because formatting errors can deliver a one-punch knockout as you compete for attention in these tracking systems, be sure to use a plain, ATS-friendly version of your resume. Studies show that nearly 75 percent of applicants are rejected through ATS due to submitting an overly stylized format.²

To steer clear of these formatting issues when applying to large companies, keep your documents simple and clean by following these basic suggestions.

Attach documents in RTF or Word files; avoid using PDF files, which don't read well for ATS systems.

Use common headings like “Summary,” “Skills,” “Professional Experience,” and “Education.”

Avoid tables, graphs, or any fancy symbols.

Use standard font styles.

Bullets are okay, but avoid arrows and check marks.

Stay away from shading and borders.

Save your resume, preferably using your last name and the word “resume” in the title.

And just a reminder: Keywords are key in an ATS-friendly resume.

You can often determine which employers use ATS systems by going to the “Careers/Jobs” page on the company website. An ATS vendor logo may appear at the bottom of the page. If you don't see any of this branding, move your mouse over the “Apply” button and check the browser window. You are likely to see the destination URL. If the company is using ATS, the URL domain will indicate the vendor.

Keep in mind that most people find opportunities through referrals and connections. When a hiring manager reaches out based on a referral, this confirms that all the time and energy you expended writing and designing an eye-catching resume was worth it. You won't be sending that resume through a cold tracking system; rather, your contact will hand deliver it to the hiring manager, or you will attach the resume as a Word or PDF file to an email address.

When it comes to one-on-one networking meetings or potential business opportunities, a resume with substantive content and an appealing design serves as a marketing centerpiece. And don't let a pending interview find you without a hard copy of your resume in hand.