Is Your Résumé Working?

Sooner or later, your résumé is going to play a key role in your job search. And if you’re sending out one CV after another and not getting a positive response (or any response at all), there’s likely something lacking with the file.

On Monday, I released a podcast episode called 5 Reasons Your Résumé Isn’t Landing Interviews.

In the 19-minute episode, I covered the following common issues with résumés submitted by qualified candidates:

1. It isn’t targeted enough at the position.
2. It doesn’t convey a cohesive or strong Unique Value Proposition (UVP).
3. It contains too many elimination factors.
4. It doesn’t address obstacles or barriers.
5. It isn’t ATS-friendly.

Also covered is what it means to be a qualified candidate (spoiler: it’s a bit of a subjective label).

If you want to hear the breakdown of all 5 reasons, you can tune in here or on your favourite podcast app.

I want to dive deeper into Reason No. 2 from the list above, since I’ve frequently seen résumés that don’t project a Unique Value Proposition at all.

Not having a strong UVP means it’s unlikely the file can create a strong enough signal for the reader about what you would bring as a candidate. Folks in this situation often get passed over for interviews as a result.

What’s a UVP anyway?

UVPs are the answer to the question: why hire this candidate for this role over anyone else?

I recently completed the Career Professionals of Canada Certified Résumé Strategist course. In it is a comprehensive guide which defines the components of a UVP as:

1. The employer’s Buying Motivators.
2. The candidate’s Supporting Qualifications.
3. The candidate’s Added Value.

Supporting Qualifications (mainly an individual’s background and expertise) and Added Value (their style, personality, special accomplishments, etc.) are two areas that every candidate must speak to in their résumé.

But in addition to that, they must tie these two components to the first one – Buying Motivators – which are unique for each role (another reason why it’s so important to have a clear job search target).

OK, what’s a Buying Motivator?

Buying Motivators are why companies hire for a role in the first place. They include things like:

• Generating revenue
• Saving costs
• Mitigating risks
• Supporting the organization’s mandate

For virtually all sales roles, generating revenue is the primary Buying Motivator of the hiring organization. But within this, there can be specifics like:

• Generating leads, which can eventually turn into revenue (for SDRs).
• Creating new revenue by acquiring new clients (Account Execs).
• Adding incremental revenue via current customers (Account Managers).

The name of the résumé game is to figure out which exact Buying Motivators are in play with a given role and effectively communicate how you’ve satisfied them throughout your career.

Once you have this kind of clarity about both the employer and yourself, then it’s much easier to tighten your résumé into a marketing document that clearly outlines relevant Supporting Qualifications and Added Value.

In other words, it gets much easier to actually cut through the noise and land interviews.