Why I Copywrite for my Resume

I've been thinking a lot about resumes lately. Mostly because I'm looking for a job and spent the better part of last month fine tuning mine.

I think I have a bit of a leg up on writing resumes than most people. That's because I used to work in human resources. Day after day I would be reading resumes. I must have gone through thousands over the course of my 8 month contract. I saw some really awful resumes.

Most resumes appeared to be an after-thought. People just threw something together without really thinking what it's supposed to achieve. Just going through the motions. After thinking about it for a bit I think I have a good way to describe it: your resume is the headline, you are the content.

The whole point of the resume is to catch the interest of a person in charge of hiring. It's cliche but true, most people spend 30 seconds or less reading your resume. In that time you need to show that you are worth contacting to learn more. So putting huge walls of text on your resume isn't doing you any favours.

A resume needs to catch the attention of the reader in a short period of time. Just enough information about yourself to show that you have the skills they need. If someone is hiring an accountant they know the duties, there's no need to spend 5 bullet points explaining the basic functions of the job. Be remarkable and show that you have done something interesting related to the position or have something special to contribute.

The best resources I've found for effective resume writing is copywriting blogs. Especially ones that focus on writing for the web. They encourage short, direct sentences that work toward an actionable event (sale, subscription, or in my case an interview). I recommend Copyblogger's copywriting 101 series of articles.

Not everything will be applicable, but it's a great place to start. After jealous friends asking me how I got an interview for this job or that without relevant experience, I would say my strategy is working pretty well.