In the wave of the Great Resignation, it can seem like everyone you know is looking for a new job. The truth is, 44% of employees are actively looking for new work, reports Willis Towers Watson’s 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey.
If you’re one of the millions of Americans looking for a new gig, it’s easy to be intimidated by the competition. What can you do to stand out from the rest of the pack?
Here are 5 tips to make your resume unskippable:
- Introduce yourself
When you cross your fingers and send off your resume to your dream company, what’s your ultimate goal? Getting the job, obviously. But first, you need to snag an interview so you can introduce yourself in person.
With the right tools, you can introduce yourself from the get-go with your resume.
For example, when you build an active resume in AirDeck, you can include a short video narration to introduce yourself and really put your face in front of recruiters.
This is infinitely more powerful than just putting your name on the letterhead. Seeing a video of you introducing yourself will certainly hook the recruiter’s attention. Plus, it will leave a profound impression—it’s much easier to remember someone’s face than it is just a name on a piece of paper or even a picture.
- Talk them through it
It can be hard to sum up everything you want to say in a simple resume. After all, you are so much more than just a few bullet points under a job title—and you need to show that worth to recruiters and hiring managers so they don’t pass you by.
You can do this with audio narrations.
When you upload your resume into AirDeck, you can easily overlay it with recorded audio clips to walk recruiters through your resume. This is your chance to add extra details and highlight your voice and personality. Plus, by verbally pointing out parts of your resume that you want prospective employers to pay attention to, you can ensure that they won’t miss some of your best features.
On average, recruiters only spend between five and seven seconds looking at your resume—which is definitely not enough time to read it in detail. But by punctuating your resume with audio narrations, you can be sure to capture their attention.
- Show, don’t tell
You heard it in school, and the adage also holds true when you’re working on sending out job applications. Show, don’t tell.
Consider: It’s easy to say you know how to use WordPress. But that’s not memorable; it doesn’t leave any lasting impression; and you can be sure that dozens if not hundreds of other applicants will have written this very same thing on their resumes.
Skip!
To make your resume unskippable, don’t just tell hiring managers about your skills—show them.
AirDeck helps you do it. For instance, you could include a screen recording in your resume showing you manipulating the WordPress backend. Or you could flaunt some of your finished work, complemented with audio narrations to explain what you’re showing them.
This is how you stand out from the crowd.
It’s easy for prospective employers to just skip over a bullet point in your resume—but showing off your work and demonstrating your expertise will really draw them in.
- Make it interactive
What’s another way to get hiring managers to keep their eyes on your resume?
Make it interactive.
With a regular, static resume, the best you can really do is list your social media handles or perhaps include the address of your personal website, if you have one. But that’s not necessarily the best approach. In reality, few hiring managers will be bothered to actually search for your profiles online or take the time to look up your website.
You need to do the work for them—and AirDeck can help you.
By converting your static resume into a dynamic, active experience, you’ll be much more likely to capture—and retain—a prospective employer’s attention. For example, to make your resume interactive, you could add links to automatically send them to your website or social media. You could even be a little cheeky and include a built-in survey asking them what they think about your work samples.
Don’t just put a plain resume in recruiters’ faces that they can easily pass on.
Instead, turn your resume into a real, interactive experience—that’s how you’ll get them to remember you.
- Include praise
Adding a list of references to the end of a resume is a standard practice. But that’s assuming hiring managers will actually take the time to reach out to your contacts … or even bother looking that far down on your resume.
Make sure prospective employers can’t hit skip by including praise from your references directly in your resume.
It’s simple. In AirDeck, you can create short video recordings from each of your references with a brief commentary on your work. This could be a colleague, an old boss, a mentor, etc.
Including this kind of video content in your resume will truly make it stand out and render you unskippable. Not only is it more engaging and interactive, but it gives prospective employers the chance to hear just how stellar you are directly from the horse’s mouth. Plus, it saves them time, since they won’t have to reach out to your references for a phone call.
Besides simply being more interesting, these short video references also lend more credibility to your resume. After all, praise for your work is more realistic and believable when hiring managers can hear it spoken out loud straight from your contacts rather than just reading a quote at the end of your resume.
With millions of Americans on the hunt for a new job, there is some stiff competition out there. To land the interview, you need to make your resume unskippable—and AirDeck can help you do it.
