Is your professional resume not getting you the kind of response you expect? Do you want to stand out among a ton of other candidates applying for the same job position? Then you need to have a resume that impresses the prospective employer within 20-30 seconds of scanning it. Getting that first call for the interview is also the first step which gets you closer to grabbing your dream job, so not getting eliminated from consideration is important. And this is where the ‘unbeatable resume‘ comes to your rescue. Here are a few pointers that worked quite well for me and hopefully will help you too. I will keep them succinct since most of the elaborate information is already available on numerous websites.
- Career Snapshot
Using less than 10 bullet points, you should be able to provide a bird’s eye view of your entire career path so far. Most of the recruiters wouldn’t go past this section if they do not find the keywords that they are looking for. This is the section where you flaunt your Salesforce certifications or other relevant achievements either in form of words or logos, preferably the latter.
- Professional Experience
This section should reflect on the most noteworthy accomplishments during your work experience. Quantify your accomplishments by using numbers and statistics since they better convince the hiring managers of your skills and talent. Depending upon the nature of your job duties in the previous years, you can create a neat table to segregate the analysis, administration and development side of your work experience. Do not turn this section into a biography of your daily job activities and rather a clean and crisp overview of how you helped improve an organization’s processes, to what end and to what extent.
- Education
Within 2-3 lines, let the hiring manager or recruiter get an idea about which school you attended, what kind of degrees you have and if relevant to the job, what courses you took. A lot of recruiters asked me general questions during the interview about the courses listed on my resume. It might not have helped me get an interview call, but for sure generated some interesting conversations during the interviews.
- Technical Skills
And last but not the least, this section should be used to list all of the software skills that you have developed and added to your arsenal over the years. If your prospective employer is a technology company, there are high chances that some of the listed skills on your resume, even those unrelated to Salesforce, might be utilized in their work environment. Having even one of them (the more the merrier) on your resume can help you get that much needed edge over the competitors.
The above is just a sample and fundamental blueprint of what a Salesforce resume should look like which will obviously vary depending upon the nature of a job position. I would recommend keeping the following in mind when designing the resume. I have included a preview of the final draft below as well:
- Keep the resume short and precise, preferably a single page or two.
- Typos and grammatical errors are unacceptable so proof-read the resume once, twice, thrice and as many times as you can before sending it out.
- Use a sweet and simple font like Times New Roman or any other non-fancy font.
- Completely eliminate any objectives or career goals from the resume. These are unnecessary and futile.
- Only list work experiences that are relevant to the job you are applying for.
Spend some quality time on your resume, sell yourself the best you can through a page or two of content and increase the odds of earning the first interview call. Do it right and be like:
If you want someone to proof-read your Salesforce resume, send it my way and I will be glad to provide you with pointers and tips for improving it. Good luck with the job search!
