What is 15 Second Resume Rule?

Today every individual has a resume or a website for displaying projects, skills, experience and much more; but what makes some resume stand out from the crowd ever imagined !!

Today let’s Decipher how to write a resume and stand out in the crowd. Some tips and tricks to let your resume talk for you!!

Photo by Luke Lung on Unsplash

What is Resume?

Have you ever gone to a movie without watching it’s trailer. You decide on the basis of trailers whether to watch a movie or not! So does the recruiter decides based on our Resume.

We often neglect our Resumes as a piece of introductory paper, but no resume is just like a trailer of movie.

It’s experience showcased in resume that lands you a job opportunity. Even a best candidate in world won’t get a job with a ill structured resume. Resume is the first impression that one uses to communicate with recruiter, it’s a hidden hint that you give to explorer.

The 15 Second Rule !

So first thing to remember a Resume is Skimmed not read!

There are generally 2 stages of resume Screening:

1. Machine/Automated resume scanning: Here automated resume screener filters out the resumes that are fit for job application, based on keywords present in job and resumes.
2. Human reading Screening: In the second stage a Human looks at resume. Recruiter has 100s of resumes for a job and not enough time to go through all in detail. So the recruiter only glances at resume that is for 15 seconds or even less, so be sure what outstands in that 15 seconds.

Today we are gonna discuss about second stage in detail that is Human Reading Screening.

A Resume isn’t Read but skimmed !

Being Humans, we have very less patience and opt for efficiency; also we have limited attention timespan. We should not forget that our Recruiter is a human too, thus when they look at 50 shortlisted resumes they will skim it for 15 seconds max and will make a decision whether or not to interview you!!

Recruiters don’t read but skim the Resume and decide whether to interview you or not !!!

So therefore, 1st guiding principle is :

“Optimizing resume for that 15 second skim”

How to Optimize Resume?

Below are some set of instructions if followed can let you to land that interview you are dreaming of!!!

#1 Keep it Short

Show the highlights of your life but not the details.

Example showing a movie in 15 seconds is not possible, so we see trailer. If Trailer is good, we give movie a short and sometimes they turn out to be rotten tomato; but if trailer is not good an outstanding movie will land no audience.

So try to show the best highlights of your skills, experience. Add all the best content first on the paper and then add in details if space permits. But don’t skip best content for detailing of some content.

“Remember for resume it’s number of experience and not depth of few experience”

Rule of Thumb to be followed:

1. Try to limit your resume to 1.5 page if experience >10 years else try for 1 page.
2. Never exceed resume over 2 page in worst case.
3. Focus on what is important and leave out the rest.

#2 Use Bullets, not Paras

Human behavior tend to find things more easily when written in bullets than compared to para (it’s struggle to look for things).

A good resume should have things structed in bullets, that makes it human readable

Try to keep things short via bullet.

Rule of Thumb to be followed:

1. Try not to condense the text. Keep it less then 3 lines in a bullet point
2. Each bullet point should have important keywords in beginning
3. Try to make maximum bullet points just one liner

#3 List your Accomplishments

Maximum resume list responsibilities one has handled. Recruiter doesn’t want to know that, instead one is interested in what you accomplished in your job, what you did but not what you were ordered to do.

Responsibilities are what you are told to do. Accomplishments show what impact you had. Rephrase your enlisted responsibilities with accomplishments.

“People don’t care what you were told to do; they care what you did.”

Try to prove to recruiter that you had an impact.

Example:

Responsibility oriented statement: Responsible for maintaining 2 applications and deploying with enhanced features.

Accomplishment Oriented statement: Successfully deployed 2 applications with new features with 20% increase in efficiency and maintaining same.

Rule of Thumb to be followed:

1. Ask yourself ‘what’ more than ‘how’. ‘What you did’ is more impactful than ‘how you did’. Tell about impact you made.
2. Quantify your accomplishments. Numbers attract more than words and are more readable. Use ‘efficiency increased by x%’ or ‘cost cutting by 50%’ etc.
3. Ask yourself ‘What are 3 things you are most proud of’, try to list the answer as accomplishment. Ask your teammates about the impact you had/have.
4. Think about what you did and how you did, what task you impacted, which department was helped most, which team member is impacted by your work…Think, think and think!!!!
5. Prioritize your accomplishments into bullet points and try to pack impacts if many.

#4 Don’t skip the project that you made in high school!!!

What I mean is don’t skip wherever you have initiated things or tried to make an impact. Remember every project you did or every failure you had shows your attributes and thought process.

Recruiter wants to know what you did even if it was self study or a professional certificate you opted for!! Listing them is important!!

People often skip listing the projects they failed, but it shows the courage of learning and decision making!!

Rule of Thumb to be followed:

1. Ask yourself ‘what did you forget to include’
2. Ask ‘Any recent thing you have learnt or are learning or are interested in’
3. Ask ‘What projects you stopped in between and why’

If answer to above questions makes you more attractive candidate then list them. Don’t Hesitate!!!

#5 Choose a Good Template

Most important!! Choosing a wrong template can result in wastage of ton of space and more number of pages or even trimming down your accomplishments.

There are lot’s of new design templates, but remember they have to be space efficient, compact and reasonable to the job profile you are applying for. A lot many templates include ‘Objectives/ About me’ sections, that is irrelevant in many cases. Your experience and skills have to be maximized and take 90% of page space.

Graphical resumes in market are pretty but offer limited knowledge about candidates resulting is no opportunity!!

Rule of Thumb to be followed:

1. No left column dedicated to headings- like graphical resumes, they waste 20% of space
2. Keep a common layout across resume eg, Company name, job profile, timespan, accomplishments — same to be applied for all experience.
3. Limit your text styling: Use same font across the resume, not to condensed nor expanded; use 2 colors max, use limited font styling. If done in excessive can be distracting and even stressful to read!!
4. Reasonable font size and margins- efficient use of white space for segregation of components and visibility to reader
5. Bullets: most important- they efficiently list things in structure and highlight important tags by default

Few Tips to Reader !!

What to include in Resume!!

1. Objectives: No- waste of space
2. Summary: Rarely- mostly for accomplishments
3. Skills: of Course!!
4. Awards & Accomplishments: Yes, highlight them, make them visible!!
5. Projects & Website URL: Yes
6. Education Details: Depends on experience- if too much like >10 yrs then no details needed.
7. Online courses, certificates, self studies etc.: Do Mention them!!

At Last I would say, resume is the paper that will speak for you. Define and restructure it so well that it makes you standout and most reasonable candidate.