The results are in!
You're a Beginner Humble Superstar
Your Standout Resume Success Formula Is…
Own Your Signature Strengths
+
Value Your Soft Skills
+
Highlight Your Most Hireable Qualities
Congratulations, friend — by completing this quiz, you’ve proven your commitment to creating a standout resume and scoring your “just right” career. If you’re ready to earn the income you deserve while doing meaningful work and making a difference, let’s jump in!
You might be newer to the workforce, but what you may lack in experience, you more than make up for with your originality, enthusiasm, and can-do attitude. Think those traits aren’t sought after? Think again.
Potential employers can see that you’re willing to learn and adapt to their businesses’ unique culture. To them, you represent a fresh perspective — you’re more likely to ask innovative questions and challenge outdated work practices and methods.
On top of that, you’ve sunk time and energy into developing valuable hard and soft skills. In formal education, internships, and previous work positions, you’ve pushed yourself to prove your worth.
But when it comes time to write your resume and actually articulate all those awesome strengths, you might find yourself a little lost for words. Maybe you’re not sure where to start or you’re worried that if you listed out your wins, it might sound self-important...
Here’s the thing: you’re the real deal.
Your achievements and unique skill set deserve to be recognized and rewarded with a satisfying, fulfilling career.
If that sounds like a stretch, just know that that’s what I’m here to help you with. By putting your standout resume success formula into practice and learning how to pinpoint your strengths and translate them onto paper, you’ll be one step closer to hearing those spectacular words:
“You’re exactly who we’ve been looking for!”
Ready to learn more about your standout resume success formula?
Let’s dig in!
“Sometimes a calling is staring us in the face, we just need to make eye contact.”
— John Mark Comer
Your Standout Resume Success Formula Explained…
You’ve studied up on your industry’s unique hiring practices, reconnected with your references, and streamlined your professional skill set.
Now it’s time to turn those successes into a resume — a resume that communicates all the valuable talents and traits that you have to offer...
Whew, that’s a lot of work.
But after writing and reviewing thousands of interview winning resumes over 14 years, I know that when you follow your unique success formula, finding your perfect fit position is more than a possibility.
It’s just a matter of putting the proven steps I’m about to share into practice!
1. Own Your Signature Strengths
Now is not the time to be humble. You’ve got so much going for you. You’re empathetic and well-meaning with communication skills that could talk a cat out of a tree.
And when you step into those signature strengths and say them loud enough for hiring managers all the way from Dubai to Dallas to hear, you’ll be surprised by the office doors that swing open.
If you’re rolling your eyes and thinking “easier said than done,” I get it.
Putting yourself out there and proclaiming your worth is scary.
Maybe you’re worried that you’ll set the bar too high and end up letting people down. Or that your resume will come off as too self-promotional and get tossed in the bin. Better to play it safe than stand out, right? Nope!
When it comes to writing a standout resume, getting comfortable with self-promotion is necessary — how else are potential employers supposed to see what you bring to the table?
And (to state the obvious) your hard work deserves recognition.
By getting really specific about your strengths and backing them up with metrics, data, and statistics, you can set yourself apart from that virtual stack of resumes and boost your chances for an interview.
Your unique characteristics that make hiring managers do a double-take:
-
Patient
You know good things take time, and you’re more than willing to wait.
-
Adaptable
You learn quickly and can shift to suit just about any work environment.
-
Team Player
You enjoy helping others.
Psst… knowing your weaknesses is every bit as important as knowing your strong suits.
Based on your responses, you can stand out by detouring around the traits that detract from your brilliance...
Stop me if this sounds familiar... You brew yourself a big mug of spearmint tea and settle in at your desk. Today is the day — you’re going to write a standout resume that’s sure to secure you your dream job.
But after typing in your basic information (email, phone number, and address — all the easy stuff), you hit a bit of a roadblock.
From technical expertise to stellar interpersonal skills, you know you have so much to offer, but you feel uncomfortable explaining that.
Maybe you wonder how people will see you… Pompous? Proud to a fault?
But here’s the thing, those accomplishments and achievements are what hiring managers are looking for. They are your assets. Your selling points. The foundation of your personal brand.
And just because you’re peach cobbler level sweet, doesn’t mean you should miss out on the opportunities that come with standing out from the crowd in the best possible way.
Your Take Action Task:
Right now, I want you to stop, grab a notebook, and jot down 5 things that make you stand out from the pack – think about what compliments you’ve received in the past.
While playing small may feel safe, when it comes to writing your resume, it’s one of the riskiest things you can do.
Because when you understate your strengths and the results you’ve worked so hard for in internships and paid positions, you stand in the way of your own long term success.
While listing out your wins can bring up insecurities like “am I really smart, educated, or disciplined enough to do this job?” that temporary discomfort is worth the deep sense of satisfaction you’ll feel when you can sit back and relax behind the desk at your new job and put your skills to work.
Your Take Action Task:
Right now, I want you to stop, grab a notebook, and jot down 5 things that make you a total asset – consider your key accomplishments and relevant skills that address your dream position’s needs.
I know this might make you feel a bit squeamish, but to score your dream career, you’ve got to get comfortable owning your strengths.
If it’s easier for you to succeed than to turn around and tell others about your successes, you’re so not alone...
We tend to celebrate traits like modesty and humility while looking down on “boastfulness.” But when it comes to your career, minimizing your achievements can be a major issue.
How will potential employers know what a catch you are if you don’t tell them?
To sidestep around this, try getting outside your head by thinking about how others have described you and use their words instead of your own.
Your Take Action Task:
Reach out to three people from different areas of your life, ask how they would describe you, and record their responses.
Review them as much as you need to really start believing the wonderful things they say about you.
2. Value Your Soft Skills
Are you a conflict resolution superstar? Is your emotional intelligence off the charts? Can your active listening skills make anyone feel seen, heard, and blissfully understood?
Those traits matter to hiring managers!
While hard skills demonstrate your experience and industry-specific training, without the soft skills, like problem-solving, empathy, and open-mindedness, to back them up, your growth potential is limited.
On top of that, soft skills are essential to a happy, healthy work environment. They make the tough stuff, like negotiating interpersonal conflicts, possible — no wonder they are so highly sought after...
Because you’ve spent your whole life honing your soft skills, it may be difficult to take a step back and recognize them, let alone list them out on a resume...
But, hey, that’s why I’m here to help.
Based on your responses, I know that you’re an incredibly generous person who’s willing to lend a listening ear or helping hand to those in need. You don’t mind sacrificing your own interests for the greater good.
So what does this mean for your resume? You’re most hiring managers’ dream team member! To communicate this, try including an example of how you’ve used your soft skills to achieve awesome results in a bullet point on your resume.
3. Highlight Your Most Hireable Qualities
Not to add one more thing to your milelong list of resume writing to-dos, but deciding on your resume’s format is almost as important as deciding on the information it includes.
Think about it, Human Resources Representatives spend an average of 6 seconds scanning your resume before deciding whether or not it’s worth passing along to a hiring manager...
So burying your selling points in a bog of long paragraphs, irrelevant experience, and flowery language, isn’t in your best interest.
What is in your best interest is top-loading your resume with valuable information and highlighting your many skills and accomplishments — sound good? Let’s get to it!
There are two primary resume formats: chronological and functional. Chronological resumes are organized by date while functional resumes are organized by skills, accomplishments, and career highlights.
Here’s the thing though, because you’re near the beginning of your career, you may not have enough experience to fill out a chronological resume, and functional resumes are a bit of a red flag to Human Resources Representatives.
But fear not — that’s where a hybrid resume can help…
Hybrid resumes are the best of both worlds. They shine a spotlight on the hard and soft skills that make you a perfect fit for the position you’re applying to and present the chronology of your past jobs later in the document.
Check out how it all comes together in the 2-page example below:
Average Resume:
Stand Out Resume:
P.S. Want to hear me dive a bit deeper into resume formats? Listen to this LinkedIn Live interview I did with LinkedIn News Editor Andrew Seaman right here!
What most people don’t know about hiring processes in 2021
(+ how a few resume tweaks can help you dramatically increase the number of interviews you get)
Gone are the days of dashing out to Staples for a $40 ink cartridge (how are those things so darn expensive?!), so you could print out a hardcopy of your resume and hand-deliver it to your dream employer...
Because everything — including the job market — has moved online.
I’m talking about employment sites like CareerBuilder, Indeed, and, my personal favourite, LinkedIn (psst… you can follow me for more resume writing tips right here), which a whopping 92% of recruiters use to post positions and screen potential candidates.
And this digitalization of just about everything has made for some serious changes in the hiring process.
Now, more than ever, it’s vital that your resume speaks not only to your accomplishments and achievements, but also to who you are as a person. Because you won’t have the opportunity to speak face-to-face with a hiring manager unless you are part of the lucky 20% of applicants actually called in for an interview.
Those odds aren’t encouraging. Sheesh.
But thankfully there are tweaks you can make to dramatically increase your chances — that’s where personal branding comes in...
Personal branding is the practice of marketing yourself, your talents, and your career as a brand.
It’s an ongoing process where you establish a professional image and leave an impression on others about who you are, what you can do, and why they should work with you.
Put it into practice:
Write a targeted, personally branded career statement, which will allow you to differentiate yourself from the crowd and market your unique skills and abilities, so prospective employers know you can meet their needs.
In need of inspiration? Check out this example career statement I wrote for an Entry-Level Human Resources Administrator:
“Dynamic and performance-driven human resources administrator with robust organizational, customer service, and communication skills. Multidisciplinary industry expertise with emphasis in records management, payroll processing, and accounts payable and receivable.”
Sounds pretty good, right?
But before we dive any deeper into personal branding, I want to introduce you to another concept at the core of my resume writing strategy:
The modern 3-step hiring process
It will give you insight into all the bells and whistles your resume needs to have to secure your job seeking success:
Once you submit your resume, it’s uploaded into the Applicant Tracking System.
For those blissfully unaware of ATS, it’s a software that 97% of large companies and 80% of small to midsize companies use to scan incoming resumes and determine whether they are worthy of moving on to human scrutiny.
The applicant tracking system parses out the information included on your resume and scans it for keywords and key phrases that the company has assigned value to. Then it gives you a score and decides whether or not you’re a good match.
This means it’s ABSOLUTELY necessary for you to include industry specific keywords in your resume (psst… if you’re wondering what that means, read my article How Do I Use Resume Keywords?)
Once the applicant tracking system works its technologic magic, a Human Resources person will do a 6-second resume scan for keywords, past experience, dates and job longevity.
This is why it’s so important that your resume is skim-friendly with the most important information in its top-third.
If the Human Resources person likes what they see, they pass it along to the hiring manager.
The hiring manager takes over. They look at accomplishments, results, how you impact the bottom line. They’re looking for those quantifiable metrics, the proof you can do what’s needed...
And then, and ONLY then, will they contact you for an interview.
That’s a lot of boxes to tick and gates to jump over, but what’s waiting on the other side — your perfect fit career where you can earn what you deserve doing work that really means something — is well worth it.
Don’t worry, I’m going to do everything I can to help you make sure your resume and cover letter are interview winning ready!
“Who's the Resume Writing Whiz Behind This Quiz?”
(Besides the gal LinkedIn News calls the “go-to resource for people looking to land their next job”… )
Hello there and welcome!
I’m Jessica Hernandez, the founder of Great Resumes Fast.
I remember the exact moment the idea for Great Resumes Fast first emerged in my mind:
I was at my desk in my former career in HR as a recruiter, and I was sitting across from a person who had stopped by to drop off her resume. A few minutes into our chat, I knew she was a perfect fit for the position.
Then I glanced down at the resume she had handed me.
And I was shocked.
Nothing on her resume conveyed the professional she really was in person. None of the incredible skills and accomplishments I had discovered in a five-minute conversation were in writing.
Had I not happened to be there when she stopped by, I would never have called her in for an interview based on her resume.
We would have missed out on this amazing team member, and she would have missed out on this position that was so perfect for her. All because her resume wasn’t doing her justice.
That’s why our mission at Great Resumes Fast is to make sure you get an interview where you can really shine.
With almost 2 decades of experience directing hiring practices for Fortune 500 companies, I’ve developed proprietary, innovative, and success-proven resume development and personal branding strategies that generate powerful results for my clients.
I’ve hand-selected, trained, and mentored a team of twenty-five exceptionally talented, credentialed, and ambitious resume writers who’ve ALL worked in hiring departments.
Our team is laser-focused on putting client needs first and creating unique resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profiles that make our clients outshine their competition (plus they’re all industry specific keyword pros!)
Our exclusive resume consultation and collaboration process is the secret behind our success — and the reason we offer a 110% satisfaction guarantee.
Let me tell you, I’m so happy you’ve taken this quiz because everything you’ve learned so far will position you light-years ahead of most other applicants. There’s just one kicker — you need to put it into action!
I’m here to help you do just that. So get excited because each step we take together will bring you that much closer to finding your perfect fit position.
All my best,
Jessica
Curated Resources From the Great Resumes Fast Blog to Set You Up for Resume Writing Success
Tune into this episode of my podcast Called & Equipped: What Your Resume Needs to Look Like in 2021. It’ll set you up with 7 actionable strategies to do away with Applicant Tracking System anxiety and align your resume with the modern hiring process!
If you’re stressed out about articulating your awesomeness, read this article How to Write About Accomplishments on Your Resume. On top of my signature system for collecting accomplishments, you’ll get a list of accomplishment-stimulating verbs to lead with.
Instantly upgrade your resume and hook hiring managers at first glance with this article: 33 Stand-Out Phrases to Freshen Up Your Resume. You’ll learn how to speak to your skills, talents, and strengths and increase your odds of scoring an interview.
Your dream job is just around the corner...
Now that you know your resume success formula, it’s time to take the next step and start implementing it. And whether that means starting from scratch or rewriting your existing resume, I’m here to help.
Make sure to check your inbox because I’m sending you a list of 178 power words and phrases, so you can share the stories of your successes, challenges, and strengths that employers want to see on your resume!