Resume REACH Method™

The topic of resumes either makes someone inwardly groan or delighted to share their wisdom.

You’re right. The ones who are delighted are the Resume Writers or Recruiters. Hiring Managers probably fall into the neutral zone because it’s a function of their day-to-day.

My destiny towards Career Coaching, Resume Writing, and Recruiting must have been evident from the beginning because I always liked putting my resume together. I viewed it as this challenge to tell my career story through writing and design.

There is a strange time continuum with resumes. Quality Resume Writers will need approximately one to two weeks to put together a great document and the resume is typically scanned by a Recruiter in seven to eight seconds. I’m on both sides of this fence. I attest to the need to carefully craft this document that serves as your gateway to the interview and to have the resume communicate effectively for that shorter review time. 

To help you develop a great resume, I’m sharing the highlights of my REACH Method™ for resume writing. 

My company RP4C is an acronym for Reaching People 4 Careers. So the “REACH” Method is a nod to the essence of what we do here and the easy way for you to remember these key elements to resume writing.

The Resume Writing REACH Method™ 

R - Readability.

Those who read resumes for a living have trained their eyes to scan for the necessary keywords they need to know if a candidate is a fit for the role they need to fill. This includes both Recruiters and Hiring Managers. The readability of a resume thus includes the white space to allow a break for the eyes to capture the quality content. This means don’t cram in too much information and leave the tiniest margins in your document. Instead set your margins for the document at .75” for left and right, .5” for the top, and .6” for the bottom. 

Keywords are critical in the read-through of your resume. The best way to know if you have appropriately captured the important word choices (a.k.a. keywords) is to find yourself a targeted position of your choosing. Then read through that job description and highlight the repeated words. Those are the “keywords.” Throughout your experience, you can describe your action-oriented bullet points with those same words and now when your resume is quickly scanned, it will resonate with the reader.

E - Educate through experience.

My guess is that you have this blinking cursor looking back at you when you get to writing the professional experience section of your resume. Sometimes it's hard to put to paper exactly what you have done without breaking into lengthy prose or sounding like a job description list. One of the best ways to flip this around and get the words on paper is to think like an educator. Those who will read your resume are not there at your job, typically. (I recognize sometimes there are internal promotions; however, you need to assume they don’t know exactly what you have done). Educate them through the characters, scenes, and players that showed up in what you accomplished.

Characters involve titles or a group of people. Scenes involve a moment in time at your company and in your role. Players involve those impacted by what you did. When you understand the elements of who, what, and quantify the impact, now you’re educating and telling a great story through your resume.

A - Audience in mind.

If I bought a ticket to a Shakespearean drama and I find myself in a comedy sketch, am I going to understand what is going on? What I’ll likely do is know that I’m in the wrong theater and vacate my seat. When it comes to your resume, the target of who will read it MUST be in your mind as you write it. I’m an advocate for honing in on the target of WHAT you are created to do so you’re in the best career lane path for you.

Who will be reading your resume is a critical component of successful writing. The obvious audience includes Recruiters, Hiring Managers, potential teammates, and C-Suite. In my analogy of going to a play, the actors have similar functions in the arena of theater. The style of the play and the script dictate how they perform in their roles to evoke drama, comedy, etc. The audience for your resume is best understood by the industry for which your role is suited. As an example, the term “architect” has two meanings in two industries. Inside the technology world, it means putting together the background infrastructure of the technology for programming related to computers. Inside the built world, it means putting together the blueprints/drawings for the coordination of space and the details to allow the contractor to build the space or high-rise. You can see how the audiences in these industries are very different and require a different approach in writing.  

C - Clarity in communication.

This is probably the most important place to remind you that resumes are initially scanned in seven to eight seconds. If your resume lacks clarity, it will not make it past the first review. To accomplish clarity, the content and design of the resume need equal consideration. 

Content includes crafting the sections of your resume for ease of readability, organizational structure, appropriate length, and keeping a chronological order to your experience. Design includes caring about the details such as font choice, font size, color usage, bold typeface, and the spacing between headings and bullet points.

Remember that if it is unclear to you, it certainly will be confusing to the reader. I recommend having another professional review your “final draft” so you can get a second opinion about clarity. A cautionary note on doing this, everyone has an opinion about resumes. So be wise to the feedback that yields helpfulness and the other which can be tossed. Choosing who reviews your resume is critical to getting worthwhile feedback and specifically ask him or her if it is clear in what you have done and what you are looking to do. If the reviewer has to ask, then it is not clear.

H - Hiring manager interview.

When writing anything there needs to be a goal in mind. For your resume, the goal is to get an interview with the Hiring Manager. This may seem like an odd section to include for writing a resume, but I promise you it’s especially important. Many professionals see the resume as a running list of everywhere they have worked and all the things they have done, which they believe requires real estate on this precious document. No… rather the resume serves a purpose: to get interviews.

I strongly suggest starting fresh with a new blank document if your resume hasn’t been touched in five to ten years. It allows you to build with the REACH Method™ and foremost in your mind should be that this document is to serve as a bridge to the conversation with the Hiring Manager. 

Check the Events Page for upcoming REACH Method™ Resume Writing Workshops!