Know How to Work Your Resume during An Interview

I am a huge proponent of crafting a succinct, compelling, and relevant story around your resume. When you think about it, your resume is a shortened version of your career’s life story. It wouldn’t be easy to tell your personal life story in a page or to explain it in a concise manner during an interview, so it is often a challenge to craft an impactful one page resume and to stay focused while walking someone thru it.

Some time ago, when I was having a lot of difficulty during my own job search in the advertising world, a mentor helped me immensely to revise my resume, craft a hard-hitting story around it, and eventually land a great job. Knowing how to work my resume made a world of difference because I walked into the interview feeling more confident about my presentation and my ability to field questions. It also kept me on point when answering questions as I was able to pull out the most relevant parts of my experience rather than give a long-winded version of events.

Below are some tips regarding how to work your resume for interview purposes:

-Revise your resume (refer to my “Spring Cleaning blog for helpful tips) so it is a strong one-page summary of your professional experience and highlights your relevant skillset and most impressive accomplishments.

-Practice walking thru your resume. Do it in front of a mirror or with a friend. Sit down and start from the bottom, working your way to the top. Of course do not be thrown off if an interviewer asks questions out of order, but get comfortable with talking about different roles, agencies, and companies. Please note you should not sound too rehearsed but rather come across naturally.

-Learn how to present your experience in a succinct and eloquent manner. I am not encouraging you to be curt or skim over important details. I am encouraging you to not be long-winded. One of the worst mistakes a candidate can make is going on and on about a topic that truly isn’t of interest to the interviewer. This can seriously be a deal breaker. Keep the interviewer engaged.

-Learn how to field questions you don’t understand or for which you don’t have a good answer. In other words, be able to think fast on your feet. For example, perhaps you have never written scopes of work. Instead of just saying “no, I have not written scopes of work” say “no, I have not written scopes of work, but I have done xyz which is quite similar and shows that I can easily learn how to perform this duty.”

-Know how to position your experience so it is relevant to the role at hand. The experience you highlight from your resume when pursuing an Account Director role at an advertising agency is going to be different from the experience you highlight when pursuing a Marketing Director role at a fashion house. Stay relevant throughout the interview and know which parts of your resume to speak to in order to impress the interviewer and relate to the job description.

-Have good reasons for why you have left each position. This is not something that is written on your resume, but it is surely a question you will be asked. Be prepared with reasons for your departure from each role, and know how to position them in a way that doesn’t make you look like a job hopper. If you were part of layoffs previously, don’t be afraid to be honest and remain confident despite this unfortunate circumstance.

-Like your resume. You have to feel good about your experience in order to present it in an appealing way. Learn to like every part of it, even that awful boss you had a few years ago. What did he or she teach you at the end of the day that you could craft into your professional story? Think these things thru before walking into the interview as negatives can often be turned into positives.

I hope this is helpful, especially to those candidates who feel like they are always bombing interviews. Interviewing is truly an art form that everyone can master, and it starts with learning how to work that piece of paper! It is easy to give up after a few bad interviews, but hopefully this blog will shake you into action and get you started on learning how to work your resume to its best advantage.