A Tale of Two Resumes

I review many students' resumes each semester, as part of the IT Leadership & Management course I teach, as an advisor to students immersed in career planning, and as a practitioner who has interviewed and hired many candidates.  The conversations that result convince me that having two resumes may help in your career search.

The first may be formatted to ease the AI review by an increasing number of applicant tracking system (ATS) apps HR departments are using to sort thru the many applicants.  This is often playing the game of matching phrases in your resume with keywords in the job description. For an interesting article on this, see beat the robots.

The second resume may apply more marketing intelligence to make your uniqueness pop. Since I arrived at UMSI, I've been encouraging the use of "about me" sidebars, and highlighting the impact you had in each job, as well as what you learned. As a manager, I care less about what you did than about the difference you made--on the organization as well as yourself.  For some interesting (some off-the-wall) and memorable designs, see the Piktochart site.  Start with the tamer #24, 40 and 44 for some ideas.

These two approaches may be two ends of the spectrum, but they recognize that (a) you are more than a collection of keywords, and (b) in a crowd of applications, standing out takes some creativity.


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