Resume Pro Tip: Location, location, location!

Preface: this post is part of The Definitive Salesforce Careers Guide series.

You can make your resume twice as effective without changing a single word in it!

Fact: Most hiring managers will read less than 10% of your resume.

People skim – it’s human nature. There is nothing you and I can do about that… except…

People skim text in predictable ways. Observe yourself the next time you read a news article that may or may not be worth your time. You’ll probably only read a portion of the first paragraph, the first sentence of each of the next few paragraphs, and, anything in bold.

The more you like, the more you’ll read. The less you like, the more you’ll skim or quit altogether.

Thus, the key to maximizing your resume is this:
Place your best attributes in the areas that hiring managers will read while skimming:

• The very first section (after your contact information)
• The job that’s listed first in your job history
• The first bullet points of each of your jobs
• Anything you add bold or underlines to, unless you overdo this

Have you won any important awards? Put that section at the top where people can see it. Did you do something at a job that had extraordinary impact? Make sure that’s the job’s first bullet point.

Here’s a real resume (with personal info changed) with its most important areas highlighted:

Did this candidate maximize his resume by putting his best attributes in the highlighted areas?

Judge for yourself because I didn’t read the rest of it!