5 Signs Your Résumé Is Holding You Back

5 Signs Your Rsum Is Holding You Back5 Signs Your Rsum Is Holding You BackWhen youre searching for a job, nothing is more frustrating than sending out scores of rsums for positions you know youre qualified for and not getting any interviews. If thats happening to you, your rsum may be holding you back in some way. Of course, in a tight job market like this one, it can be hard to know if the issue is simply the market and the amount of competition out there or if your rsum itself is putting you at a disadvantage. Here are five of the biggest indicatorsthat its your rsum thats probably the problem 1. Youre applying for plenty of jobs for which you match the listed qualifications, but you arent getting interviews. Most people, even the exceptionally well-qualified, dont get interviews for every job they apply for. But if youre applying for dozens of jobs per month jobs for which you truly do meet the qualifications and never hearing anything back, chances are good that your applicati on materials are responsible.Your rsum probably isnt going to get you interviews at even half the jobs you apply to. But if its not even scoring you a success rate of one in 10, that tells you that you need to revisit what youre sending out.2. You feel like youre a much more valuable worker than your rsum shows. A lot of people think to themselves, If I could only get an interview, theyd see what a great fit I am. But if you feel that way, your rsum isnt doing its job. If youre a great employee someone with a track record of achieving at a high level in past jobs its your rsums job to show that. If its not, you need to rewrite your rsum until it reflects why an employer should be excited to talk to you. A common response to this is, But the type of work I do is hard to convey on a rsum. However, being a valuable employee is about getting results for your employer, and theres always a way to describe those results on a rsum.It doesnt have to be as quantitative as increased sales b y 20 percent or promoted twice in two years, although those are great accomplishments to include if theyre true. Instead, it might be something more like became the departments go-to source for quickly and accurately resolving billing discrepancies, built a reputation of working successfully with previously unhappy clients or resolved an inherited four-month backlog in three weeks. Whatever it was that made you excellent at your work, thats what your rsum needs to convey. Otherwise, it wont open many doors for you.3. If you imagine the rsum of someone with a similar work history but who has done mediocre work, it doesnt look much different from your own. Your rsum shouldnt just list what activities you engaged in at each job. Instead, it should convey how well you did them. Hiring managers probably wont be especially impressed by your job descriptions. What they care about is whether you excelled in the role. If your rsum doesnt convey that you were better than that other guy who ha d a similar job, theres nothing to make an employer think youre the one worth interviewing. The way you address this is by focusing your rsum on what you achieved in each role and how you excelled, not just a list of duties.4. Its three or more pages. Job seekers with long rsums regularly protest that they cant possibly fit their full job history on two pages. But many highly qualified, senior-level candidates regularly manage to stick to two-page (and sometimes one-page) rsums. So if you exceed two pages, most hiring managers will see you as someone who cant edit, doesnt understand what information is most important and doesnt respect their time. Are you really willing to accept that outcome just so you dont have to trim down your text?5. When you do get interviews, interviewers seem surprised by some of the information you give them.If your interviewer seems pleasantly surprised by a work achievement or other qualification that comes up in the interview, it might be something that should have been on your rsum in the first place. Similarly, if your interviewer seems disappointed to learn that, say, your last job was only a few hours a week or lasted only a few months, thats a flag that your rsum might need to be clearer. You might wonder why you should be clearer about things that might get you disqualified, but otherwise you risk wasting your time interviewing for jobs for which youre not a strong candidate and dont have much chance of being hired.Alison Greenwrites the popularAsk a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. Shes the author of How to Get a Job Secrets of a Hiring Manager, co-author of Managing to Change the World The Nonprofit Managers Guide to Getting Results and the former chief of staff of a successful ohne gewinnerzielungsabsicht organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.