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Why you should consider a Professional Resume

Your resume is one of your most important career tools. It will determine your career progress and impacts on your lifestyle. If your resume is not tailored towards your career objectives, does not promote your ‘value proposition’ to hiring organisations, or is not in a format that can pass through Applicant Tracking Systems, you will not achieve interviews despite your academic credentials, skills, knowledge and experience.

Selection Criteria

Responding to Selection Criteria can be daunting. It is important to know the difference between ‘Demonstrated’ and ‘Ability to Acquire’. ‘Demonstrated’ means that you have to prove that you have expertise in that specific criteria (usually by STAR responses); whereas ‘Ability to Acquire’ means that you have the capabilities to gain this specific expertise. If each criteria is not reflective of this, your application will probably be discarded even if your skills, knowledge and experience are a ‘match’ for the advertised position.

Cover Letters

Advertised positions seeking Cover Letter applications (government and the private sector) still require you to address the ‘specifics’ of the advertised position. These may be incorporated under ‘Our Ideal Candidate’ or similar. In all instances, you need to demonstrate that you have the required expertise or the capability to acquire it. A vital element of cover letter applications is your motivation in applying for the position and why you want to work for the organisation. This often determines whether or not you will achieve an interview.

Online Responses

Many hiring organisations (especially government) now seek online responses to targeted questions. How you respond to these generally provides evidence of your behavioural capabilities which are critical in identifying how you would ‘fit’ into their organisation. Usually, your skills, knowledge and experience will be identified from your resume, so your online responses provide a broader picture of your potential to be of value in the advertised position.

Every time you apply for an advertised position your online presence will generally be checked out. Most hiring organisations (government and the private sector) expect you to have a LinkedIn profile which is not a copy and paste of your resume. Your LinkedIn profile should evidence your career path and importantly, highlight your career achievements. Keep in mind also, that many hiring organisations don’t even advertise position vacancies, rather, they source their ‘talent’ from LinkedIn profiles.