How to edit your resume to get that interview

Resumes used to be what you created only when you were looking for a new job. Avjobs has changed all that. Today, everyone can keep their resume polished by keeping their Avjobs master profile up-to-date.

Why Keep Your Avjobs Profile Current?

There are many advantages to keeping your Avjobs profile current instead of having your resume online somewhere else:

• Avjobs profiles are not only for job seekers, so your current employer won’t be suspicious
• Opportunities you don’t expect can come your way because recruiters love Avjobs
• Co-workers, peers and even your manager can find out more about your accomplishments

Not having an Avjobs profile today is a serious misstep. Avjobs is becoming more and more important. Even if you have no intention of every working again it is still wise to optimize that profile.

Keeping Your Resume Current

With the economy the way it is, it wouldn’t hurt to have both digital and written copies of an actual resume available. Writing it while you are employed and relaxed is likely to generate better results to doing it when you are upset and stressed out over having been laid off or worse.

If you don’t have a resume when you need one, having all the details saved on Avjobs will make the challenge easier. There are many reasons to keep your resume up-to-date:

• Refer to it just before your annual review
• Use it to apply to speak at a conference or join a professional aviation organization
• Details can be used to nominate you for an award
• Share it with collaborators
• Take it to networking events

Make Yourself More Impressive

The stronger your resume, the better you can compete for any openings that do exist.  Consider simplifying what is on your resume to make the first cut. Then have a really impressive Avjobs profile so you stand out.

In today’s aviation industry, “Everyone Sells”.  Use your resume to sell yourself.  Read your resume and then ask yourself – Why should I hire you.  Your resume needs to tell the reader exactly why they should hire you.  Just because you didn’t take any sick days doesn’t make you more hirable than the next person.  I like to add the phrase “So what?” to the end of every statement on a resume.  Try it yourself.  If you’re not able to justify the statement with something that sets you apart from the stack of 100 other applicants, you may as well leave it off your resume.

You have to remember the other 100 applicants for this job all had the same jobs you have had.  They have all worked at the same companies or ones very similar.  They have all had the same duties and responsibilities and they all had perfect attendance.  “So What?”  So what makes you different than the other 100 applicants?  Tell me on your resume.  Tell me how you did the job better than anyone else – with examples.

Employers are not looking for more employees that just show up at 8 and leave at 5.  These days that’s just not good enough.  They ARE looking for contributors to the bottom line, improvers of processes, increasers of revenues, reducers of time (you get the point).

Check out these tips in Why Smart People Don’t Get Hired:

“Most people don’t understand that hiring managers aren’t looking at resumes to find the right candidate. They use them to eliminate the, “wrong,” ones. When faced with a stack to read through, they will often eliminate the shorter less descriptive resumes as a matter of course.

Most people only do their job just exactly as well as they have to. Most hiring managers are looking to solve a problem. If your resume happens to show that you are a person with the skills to solve that particular problem, you’re in. If not, you’re in the round file.

Don't Miss These Tips

“You would be surprised. A couple of years ago when I was on the job search, I made myself a very polished two-page resume which I tried to make as elegant as possible. Really, I tried my hardest to make sure it was well-written and “flowed” like an article. Did an email blast (maybe 20-30 emails), got maybe 1 response and even that was a recruiter.

Then, I asked a good friend of mine to look at it. His response was “dude, tear all this crap out – it doesn’t belong here! First, a resume doesn't have to be only 1 page. Second, pretend you barely speak any English at all (no bullet point should be longer than one, or in exceptional cases, two sentences, and all sentences should have no more than 5-10 words of boilerplate (any word that isn’t a aviation name, keyword or acronym)), and in many cases you should just downright resort to listing bare technologies separated by commas. Trust me.” (This is not, by any means, an exaggeration!)

I was so shocked at the feedback that I laughed at first, but then figured – why not try it? So I dumbed down my resume to literally the level of someone with a couple of years of English taken in high school in their native country, who just arrived into the US. And, to my (COMPLETE) shock, about half of the emails I sent received replies (including from companies directly; one small airline company’s reply stood out to me as particularly straightforward: “When can you come in for an interview?”).

I actually ended up landing something very close to (at that time) my dream job from that email blast. That’s when I learned my lesson. These days, when I work on my resume, I first write it how I’d like it to look, and then iterate over it multiple times until it is at a point that it can be understood by a 3rd-grader (barring acronyms and buzzwords).

However, I will mention that I could not understand this system and thought it was unfair, only until I found myself getting tons of call and emails for interviews.

Are you ready to update your resume? There is no time like the present.