Part of the process to obtaining a new role involves writing and refining a resume, and I often have several conversations, emails and editorial rounds with a candidate before my hiring manager sees my candidate’s resume. Past candidates have told me they don’t believe hiring managers actually read a resume, and others have foolishly flat out refused to make changes; some, however, work tirelessly without complaint to make all recommended changes. I don’t ask for resume changes and adjustments for funsies; rather, I ask for them, and even make them myself because I know what each of my individual hiring managers is looking for whether or not they are reading or scanning. This being said, it’s important that your resume accurately reflects your skill set in language and arrangement thereof that’s most reader-friendly and communicative of your abilities to land you that next critical process step: the interview. I call a resume a calling card because it’s the tool that gets you the phone call that leads to the interview that will hopefully lead to the job offer.
Contrary to some opinions, and even for technical roles like developers versus more functional positions like business analysts, proper English grammar, spelling and syntax is valuable and you will be judged for the structure of content sometimes as much as the buzz words you include, and the skill sets you can hopefully demonstrate. Hiring managers, HR professionals and recruiters make snap assessments about you based on their seven-second scan of your calling card. As you would on the phone interview or writing a line of code on a dry erase board for a development team that is interviewing you, put your best professional foot forward and make sure your resume makes me want to pick up the phone and call you about a position.