7 Tips to Create an Authentic Resume that Connects with Employers
Your resume is essentially a marketing document, and in marketing right now, authenticity matters more than ever.
To create an authentic resume, alongside listing your achievements, skills and experience, you should provide genuine and accurate insight into your personality, work style, and values.
Contents
Why Does Authenticity Matter?
Many resume examples you find online include a lot of fluff and little substance. Offering generic overstatements and saturation as a keyword strategy. These resumes are written with a heavy focus on the Applicant Tracking System as the audience.
However, once past the Applicant Tracking System, an actual human will read your resume, and if you have failed to consider your human audience, then your resume still won’t get you an interview.
You want the hiring manager to get to the end of your resume and want to meet you. Likeability is after all a key principle of persuasion. You can achieve likeability by building a connection through authenticity, sincerity and relevance.
This means, using an authentic voice and providing an accurate representation of your skills, experience, and also your personality, work style, motivators and values.
Tips for an Authentic Resume
1. Set a Defined Personal Brand
Before you attempt to present your skills, strengths, personality, values, motivators, and interests on your resume, it is helpful to set a focused personal brand (aligned to your desired role).
By defining your personal brand, you can deliver a stronger message, improve your ability to differentiate yourself and build credibility.
No one is exceptional at everything. You will be more effective if you select just three main strengths to focus otherwise you dilute your brand and lack genuineness.
2. Use Personal Pronouns
An authentic resume uses personal pronouns. A controversial recommendation I know, since ‘Do not include personal pronouns on your resume’, is one of the most commonly stated rules.
However, in the age of authenticity, your resume should have an authentic voice, and this means using personal pronouns were appropriate.
Use ‘I’ within your personal summary section. Please don’t overdo it. We all know the monotony of reading a cover letter that begins every sentence with ‘I’.
3. Tell Your Stories
There are two reasons storytelling on your resume is helpful. The first is that stories unite people and build connection. The second is that my telling your stories you can provide the reader a better insight to your unique approach and personality.
There are two ways you can apply storytelling to your resume. The first, is to tell your overall career story, by creating a coherent narrative around your career path throughout your resume. Second, you can include smaller success stories.
Hiring managers are looking for engaged employees. They want to know aside from payday, what keeps you turning up for work each day.
You don’t need to state directly “I am passionate about…” Instead, weave evidence of your motivation into your document.
For example, use your role descriptions to include your motivation for role changes. Or you could highlight the achievements you are most proud of and explain why.
5. Showcase your Volunteer Work
SEEK research found that 95% of employers agreed that volunteering can be a credible way of gaining real-work experience to add to your resume.
Including volunteer work on your resume doesn’t just help to prove your employability skills, it also demonstrates your personality and core values.
Further Reading: Adding Volunteer Work to Resume
6. Include Your Hobbies
Despite popular belief, hobbies can also be relevant. You do need to be selective and strategic in the way you share your hobbies, but you can include them.
Including hobbies gives an immediate point for connection. It helps with building likability, and offers an insight into the type of person you are; adventure seeker, creative, community orientated, committed to learning.
It would be best if you kept some sensible limits to what you share. Avoid anything potentially controversial. Rules for polite conversation apply.
Also, be mindful of providing information that reveals your age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, or disability status. This information has no relevance to your ability to perform a role. Unfortunately, discrimination does occur.
7. Avoid Jargon & Overstatements
Filler words and jargon don’t belong on an authentic resume.
The type of language we are talking about is ‘results orientated professional’, ‘proven track record of success’, ‘motivated self-starter’, or ‘strategic thinker’,
An authentic resume with use your words – no overstatements, no buzzwords, and no clichés .
