Presentation matters

While the content of your resume is always the most important part, the presentation is a close second. Consider for a minute the restaurant industry. What are some of the main differences between an average restaurant and a 5-star restaurant? The quality of the food is (or should be!) the main difference, but presentation matters. Our first experience of food is usually how it looks, and if something doesn’t look good, it is less likely that we will want to eat it.
Liken this to your resume. It doesn’t always matter if you are the best person for a particular job if your application doesn’t reflect it. Your resume is your ticket to the next step in the hiring process. A recruiter or a hiring manager spends an average of just 6 seconds looking at a resume and if yours doesn’t catch his or her attention in that time, it is sent straight to the discard pile instead of getting a second look.

So how do you make sure that you catch the attention of a hiring manager who has 300 other applicants for the same position? Well, just keep your application organized, easy to read and add a little “wow factor”. Clear headings and concise information is essential as well as the order of the content. The thing about a resume is, you want to stand out and be remembered without going overboard and ending up in the “noticed – but not in a good way” pile in the hiring manager’s office.
When it comes to job search, “any press” is NOT “good press”. If you stand out because your resume is disorganized, cluttered, or just over the top colorful, you may not get a second chance with that company. And people talk. You may not get a second chance with three other companies that they are collaborating with either.