The Top 10 Secrets Your Professional Resume Reveals

You might not know the secrets your resume reveals to recruiters and hiring managers.

What? There’s something else you have to think about when creating a resume? Yes, absolutely.

Why? Because after people read 100s or 1,000s of resumes, they recognize patterns. They see beyond obvious descriptions of work experience, skills, accomplishments, and education. In fact, they start to discern a lot of important information.

If you want to know more about the secrets resumes expose, look at the infographic. Then, read the explanation of each item in the narrative below:

The Narrative

1. Achievement Orientation

First, see if you use more resume space listing duties or sharing accomplishments.

Recruiters want to see bullet points that highlight your accomplishments. You have to write about your wins. If you don’t, your readers won’t know about them, and they will doubt your achievement orientation.

2. Writing Skill

3. Specific & General Mental Abilities

Next, your resume’s quality reflects your specific and general mental abilities. Recent research found SMA and GMA to be the best predictors of future job performance.

When you think about it, writing a professional resume is a lot like crafting a business case. You have to:

a. Gather information — the job description and company research.

b. Then analyze that information and identify what matters.

c. And build a rational argument to influence others to decide to interview you.

As you know, it’s not easy, but when you ace it, you look like the smartest, most attractive job applicant the company has.

4. Ability to Create & Sustain Relationships

Also very important, your professional resume shows your relationship ability. Recruiters look at your average tenure per employer. Then, they form opinions about how well you work with others.

If they notice too much turnover, they move on. If recruiters don’t see enough movement, they hesitate. They need to know you can fit into a new culture.

Thus, if you’re writing your resume, use a format that makes it easy to see your employment dates.

If you look like a risky hire, a professional resume writer can help you restructure your resume.

5. Perceived Secrets

Building on the discussion of dates above, you might also have employment gaps on your resume.

If you have more than one or a large gap, explain it in one short sentence. Don’t let your readers make stuff up (MSU) about what you were doing.

6. Context & Business Literacy

Lack of context is another type of gap that occurs on most resumes.

Be sure to help your readers understand a few basic facts about your most recent employers:

a. Size (annual revenue, assets under management, etc.).

b. Ownership model (NYSE, private equity owned, family owned, etc.).

c. Industry.

Doing so gets you bonus points for business literacy and SMA.

7. Storytelling Ability

As you layer on perceptions from the reader’s first look forward, you start to tell a compelling story.

Good leaders communicate through stories. Thus, you share information about your leadership skills through your resume whether you mean to or not.

8. Self & Other Focus

Another leadership “tell” is your focus on your readers’ experience.

a. Have you made your resume easy to read?

b. Can a reader do a 6-second scan?

c. Can they find your accomplishments?

d. Do they understand your company well enough to keep reading, or do they have to click away to learn more about ABC Co.?

Giving your reader a good user experience demonstrates your focus on others.

9. Professional Standards

Good leaders also set high standards. A neat, well-organized resume speaks volumes about your focus on excellence.

10. Quality

Finally, your resume gives off a meta-impression, a gestalt, of quality or lack of quality. It’s good to know this and check your resume’s meta-message to ensure it’s positive.

Professional Resume Samples

You can see sample professional resumes here that illustrate the items on the list above.

Featured by: 3Plus International
Image: Fotolia/gajus
Updated October 2022

© 2015 – 2023, Donna Svei. All rights reserved.