Sales Seekers

008: 5 Reasons your Sales Résumé isn't Landing Interviews
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[00:00:00] Intro
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Mike Bird: ​hey there. Welcome back to Sales Seekers, the podcast where I help folks break into and up through the tech sales world. I'm Mike Bird, and today I want to talk about the résumé. This is one of those things that when it comes to job searching can be a real source of stress and anxiety. Maybe because job seekers don't always feel like they are good at writing or that they don't feel like they can really express themselves or sell themselves through a document such as a résumé.

A lot of times people send a lot of résumés out into the world and they don't get any response back. And that's obviously very discouraging. So today I want to talk about five reasons why your résumé probably isn't leading to interviews. It's not an exhaustive list, but I want to give you some ideas as to why - if you're in a situation where you're looking for work - why résumé may not be resonating with the employers you're targeting. If you're actually targeting employers that much at all. And we'll get to that more in a moment.

Really quickly, if you like this episode, feel free to subscribe. If you love the show, I'd love to see your feedback in the form of a review. It's still a pretty new show and I'm open to taking all kinds of ideas into consideration for how it can be better.

[00:01:14] What is a qualified applicant?
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Mike Bird: Before we get into the five reasons why résumé may not be working well for you, I want to talk about what it means to be a qualified applicant, because all of this assumes that you have some degree of qualification for the roles that you're pursuing. Now it's hard to quantify exactly what it means to be a qualified applicant, because oftentimes what's listed on a job description is a wishlist coming from the hiring manager, which may or may not be possible for the company to find or attract.

So the posting will receive applications from people who don't have all the qualifications, or the posting will be modified, or the job will be changed as the hiring cycle progresses to reflect the realities of the talent the company is actually able to attract.

About 10 years ago, there was a line that came out that mentioned that women only apply to roles where they meet a hundred percent of the criteria for the role, while men on the other hand applied for jobs with as little as 60% of the qualifications. It's been questioned whether or not that's actually true.

There's other research that I'll link to in the show notes that suggests there is a gap between the rates at which men and women apply based on their perceived levels of qualification. But the gap may be much narrower than was previously thought.

The Behavioral Insights Team study I'm pulling from suggests that men on average apply when they have about 52% of the qualifications. Whereas women apply when they're about a 56% match.

The point of this is not to actually examine the gap between men and women and what the qualification levels are when they decide to apply. The key takeaway from all of this is that for both men and women - and perhaps non-binary folks as well - generally speaking, people do not apply to jobs carrying a hundred percent of all of the qualifications that are listed on a job description. A lot of the other career professionals that I've worked with and met over the years will typically suggest about a 70% qualification level is enough for you to submit your résumé and expect to have some kind of a response. Again, that assumes that the résumé doesn't have some of the gaps that we're going to talk about in a moment.

Okay, let's get into these five things that are going to give you some starting points to understand where you may be encountering some difficulties. And I'm also going to give you some ideas for how you can fix or troubleshoot these issues.

[00:03:24] 1. Your résumé isn’t targeted enough at the position
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Mike Bird: So number one, the first reason your résumé isn't landing an interview is that it's not targeted enough at the position you're pursuing.

Maybe it doesn't respond directly to the requirements of the job, which is usually the one-third of the job description that is talking about what that person is expected to do on a day-to-day basis or what that company is looking for in that role.

There's usually another third of the job description dedicated to selling the company or the organization and another third that is dedicated to talking about compensation, benefits, what's in it for the person applying. But the key third that has the job description in it is something that you want to map back to as much as you can.

The underlying challenge here is that some folks don't really know what they really want to do. The targets that they have in mind, the kinds of roles that they want to pursue, the kinds of companies they want to work in, the size of organization, et cetera. And so people often end up taking a sort of single generic résumé, splashing it around against several dozen, maybe even over a hundred different job postings, and of course it's not going to land as well as throwing a few carefully aligned darts - you could imagine it that way - at some roles where you could really be a highly qualified fit.

Now, if you're struggling to find clarity on where you want to apply and what you want to do moving forward, then I suggest you go back and check out episode six. Which talks about how to actually narrow down your job search target, so that you're going after roles that you are a good fit for, and that you are qualified for.

As you gain clarity on where you want to land and start finding job descriptions that really resonate with you, one of the things that you can do here is called a T-exercise where you create essentially a T-shaped chart with the requirements of the job posting on the left-hand side and on the right-hand side of the chart for each line of each requirement, you're going to write down different stories, accomplishments, things that you have done that demonstrate how you can meet that requirement in your résumé.

In most cases, you are not going to have accomplishments that tie back fully to all of the requirements. And in that case, you can be a bit creative. If you don't have a ton of sales experience, you might use your non-sales selling experience. You can check out episode two for more on what non-sales selling experience is, but these are the things that you can do to start to align yourself more tightly to the target based off of what is written in the job description.

If you're sending out a generic résumé to a whole bunch of different job postings. You're not going to get very many callbacks.

[00:05:50] 2. Your résumé doesn't convey a cohesive or strong Unique Value Proposition
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Mike Bird: Reason number two for why your résumé is not really working for you is it doesn't convey a cohesive or strong enough Unique Value Proposition. So it may not be showing your experience, your skill level, the expertise that you have as someone available in the market.

It may not be a compelling enough document. So while it may talk a little bit about some of the things you've accomplished, it may also read like a set of job descriptions from your previous roles. And if that's the case, you want to be thinking about how do I rewrite some of these things that I was doing and turn them into actual accomplishment statements. So creating lines that reflect the results you achieved, the actions you took, the situations you were in in these past roles and making sure that the roles that you're highlighting on your résumé are really aligned with the position you're going after.

For example, if you're going after a sales role, and maybe you have a whole lot of experience in, let's say. Operations. It's okay to not talk so much about your operations life and focus as heavily as you can on the sales roles you've had or the non-sales selling experience you've got.

If you're creating a résumé that reflects a diverse set of career experiences, there could be the risk that you are essentially diluting the message, if you talk about everything you've done across different kinds of functions in different companies in a very broad way. You want to be able to narrow things down and create this consistent story that runs from top to bottom through your résumé that says, "Hey, I have the skills to be able to do this particular job, and I'm not going to focus on the experiences that I have that are less relevant to this employer."

Another part of this issue is the top third of the first page of your résumé, which is probably the most critical part of any résumé. It's the part of the résumé that gets scanned initially by recruiter or by a hiring manager. And it's the entry point into the rest of the file. And so if it's not really clear and compelling as to who you are and what you bring to the table, at least at a high level, you're not going to invite very many readers to continue to read through and down into the rest of the résumé and get into the bullet points that actually talk about your accomplishments.

So that top third has to be really strong and really well-aligned to the role you're pursuing. This is where you would see your professional summary, where you might put a couple of really key highlights. It's also where you may put your technical skills, so that it's clear you understand the different components of the role.

The bottom line is that if the top third of the first page isn't well positioned and doesn't paint the picture of a strong, Unique Value Proposition, the rest of your résumé is going to go unread.

Something you can do to test how strongly your Unique Value Proposition is coming across is to give your résumé and the target role you're pursuing to a few people, ideally folks that don't know you as well, and have them give you feedback on whether or not the résumé caught their eye, got them interested and helped them see, " oh, yes. I see how this lines up with the role you're pursuing." Ask them to review the top third of the résumé first, if they aren't compelled to read past that first third without you prodding them, then you might not have a strong enough hook or the value proposition may be a bit cloudy.

[00:08:54] 3. Your résumé contains too many elimination factors
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Mike Bird: Reason number three: the résumé contains too many elimination factors. You may have heard people talk about the importance of spelling and grammar and eliminating typos and things like that on a résumé. And these are real concerns because oftentimes the reader of the résumé is going to make a judgment call based off of things like how well-formatted the file is, how correct the spelling and grammar you've used is. The language you're using: is it industry specific? Are you using terms that are actually not appropriate for the role? Is the résumé difficult to read? Maybe the font is too small. Maybe it's not spaced out well enough.

These are things that can get a person disqualified before the résumé is fully evaluated. So you want to make sure you are submitting a résumé that has as few spelling and grammar and formatting mistakes as possible.

You want to make sure also that the length makes sense. And what I mean by that is it's okay to have a multiple page résumé if it matches the actual depth of your career experience.

So if you're just starting out in your career, it's possible you may only need a one-page résumé. If you're more mid-career it's possible, you could get all of what you've done that's of significance for the employer you're targeting onto one or two pages. If you've been a longtime executive, your résumé may go to three pages easily.

At the end of the day, you want to ensure that you are not drawing the reader out beyond what is relevant to them. And so again, if you're submitting a nine page document, in most cases, that's probably going to be too long and will be seen as an elimination factor. And so your résumé won't be read.

To fix some of these elimination factors, try printing out your résumé if you have a printer and reviewing it in physical form. Read it from top to bottom out loud. If you don't have a printer, at the very least try and read the file out loud and review it from different zoom levels on your computer to see what the document looks like from afar, as well as from up close. From a far, you're going to see large blocks of texts that may be difficult to read and issues with spacing. Up close, you're going to catch some of the spelling and grammar issues that you would have missed had you done a cursory or high-level review of your résumé.

Obviously having a spellcheck that is aligned with the language that you were submitting your résumé in is helpful. For example, I'm Canadian, so my spellcheck should be in Canadian English. If I was American and applying to an American company, then my spellcheck should be set for US English standards. These kinds of things might seem obvious. But so many people get disqualified right out of the gate because of these issues with the actual writing.

By reading things out loud, you can also catch more advanced grammatical elements, such as faulty parallelism, which is where you have an inconsistent delivery of ideas.

For example, if I said, I walked my dog, took him to his grocery store and then ran with him through the park. I've used three past tense phrases, one after another, in a parallel and well-aligned sentence. But if I were to say something like I walked my dog, then I took him to his grocery store, and then we went running through the park.

I've actually changed the verb tense in that third phrase, the overall flow of that sentence doesn't work as well and the information would not be taken up as quickly by a reader versus if I'd kept the verb tense similar throughout all three phases of the sentence.

Again, those are things that you can catch more easily if you read things out loud. Ideally you want to try and create the easiest to read document as possible.

[00:12:13] 4. Your résumé doesn't address obstacles or barriers
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Mike Bird: Reason number four, obstacles or barriers may be too obvious or too severe. This is one of the tougher areas to address because unlike things like readability and the overall catchiness of your Unique Value Proposition. What we're talking about here are actual gaps in your qualification level, or at least the perceived qualification level you have.

Sometimes these gaps are things like a slight lack of optimal experience or career breaks you may have taken. If you've changed jobs frequently, maybe you would be seen as someone who is likely to leave the organization after a short period of time and employers are always wary of that.

With obstacles or barriers to employment listed on your résumé, you want to be really upfront in addressing these kinds of things so that people don't assume the worst when it comes to your application.

If you had to take a break for a year to care for someone or to raise a child, you went on some kind of a leave, put that down. Just list that as it is, we're trying to look to eliminate gaps in the chronological timeline of your work history.

If you traveled for a year abroad, it's okay to list that and briefly share what you learned that might make you a stronger employee for that organization. For example, maybe you're hoping to work for a company that is trying to sell into overseas markets. And because you've actually spent time in some of these countries, you would bring a greater level of cultural awareness, cultural competency to the table as an employee that is trying to do business development in those new regions.

If you're liking experience, maybe the number of years that are mentioned on the job description do not line up with what you've accumulated so far. Then you want to ensure that you a) address the rest of the requirements as much as possible, and b) demonstrate how amazingly you performed in your role during the years of experience that you do have.

When in doubt, you want to either explain away some of the obstacles or barriers that people may perceive by reading your résumé. Or you want to maximize the experiences you do have so that people say, "This person may be missing a year or two experience. But they've been crushing their quota for two years. We need to give them a conversation to understand, maybe they're on their way up. And we want to be a part of that."

So that's number four.

[00:14:26] 5. Your résumé isn't ATS-friendly
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Mike Bird: Reason number five is that the résumé you've submitted isn't ATS-friendly. ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. These are the kinds of software that are often used by companies to take in large volumes of résumés, do cursory reviews, store data coming off of the résumé and create profiles of candidates who are going through the different hiring cycles within a company.

Getting through an ATS is often seen as a really difficult thing. But in reality, it's usually about making sure that your résumé can be well-read. If you're doing all of these other things that I've talked about here, and you're addressing these other gaps, it can be fairly straightforward to make an ATS-friendly résumé.

An important thing to note here is if your résumé was made off of something like a Canva template, or maybe has extensive design elements like graphics, charts, and tables, oftentimes these templates and these kinds of elements will not be picked up accurately by an ATS. With an ATS, usually simpler content types are better. If there's critical data living in these kinds of elements that won't appear clearly in plain text format, then there's a good chance that it's not going to be picked up by the ATS.

Two-column résumés, similarly, can also be misread by ATS software. And so it's strongly recommended that you avoid two-column formats for this reason. Two column résumés are also harder for humans to read. And that's really important because at the end of the day, humans are the ones who decide who actually gets the interviews, not the ATS.

One other thing that could be a challenge with ATS software is making sure that you have enough keywords related to the job you're applying for in the résumé. So ensuring that you have common industry terms. For example, in sales, these could be things like prospecting needs, discovery, contract negotiation, account management, executive engagement. Things like that.

You want to be able to put these words into your résumé in a natural way. Either in something like a skills list that's in the top third of the first page or earlier on, in your résumé. And then you also want to be able to include these key skills when you talk about the different accomplishments that you have under your belt.

Quick fixes when you have a résumé that may not be ATS-friendly. One is to ensure that it is a one-column document, and that you use things like graphics and charts sparingly. If there's really key data sitting in those charts, make sure it's also coming out somewhere in plain text.

Another way to test for ATS readability is by downloading your résumé into .txt format. This is plain text format that you can review in a program like Notes or Notepad and in this format, you will see right away how your résumé would look to an ATS. If it's not reading properly, if sentences are broken up and content is all over the place, then you have a résumé that needs reformatting.

[00:17:11] Need help with your résumé?
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Mike Bird: Okay, I'm going to pause here. This has been a lot of information. And if you're brand new to résumé writing or you haven't put together a résumé in a long time, you'll have a lot of things to work through.

And if you have questions about anything, feel free to reach out to me. My email is Mike M I K E @salesseekers.ca.

I want to quickly recap these five reasons why, if you're a qualified candidate, your résumé may not be leading to interviews.

Number one: your résumé isn't targeted enough at the position you're applying for. It's maybe too generic.

Number two: the file isn't conveying a strong enough or cohesive Unique Value Proposition.

Number three: it contains too many elimination factors, spelling, grammatical errors, readability errors. It's too long. It's too irrelevant, et cetera.

Number four: there are obstacles or barriers that may be too obvious or severe that are coming through in your résumé and you need to try and work around these things to position yourself as a really solid candidate.

And number five: the résumé isn't ATS-friendly enough. Addressing this can get you much further, particularly with large companies that receive a large number of résumés for their job postings. If you do not have a résumé, that's being properly parsed by ATS software, there's a good chance it won't be reviewed by a human.

Okay. So if you've got questions on all of this, I'm going to be doing a little more writing based off of this topic because I think it's a really important one that a lot of folks get stuck on.

If you want to follow along with my written content, I put out a newsletter every couple of weeks. It gives you an actionable tip for how to break into and up through the B2B tech sales world. You can subscribe to that by going to sales seekers.ca/tips. Again, that link will be in the show notes. This podcast goes out in between the bi-weekly newsletter so you have a constant flow of resources from me.

Again, if you're having trouble with your résumé, reach out to me. Let's see if we can work on getting you more interviews so you can land work faster.

I'll catch you again in a couple of weeks. Thanks for tuning in. Bye for now.