THE BEECHMONT CREST CAREER GUIDE:
SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN THE CORPORATE JUNGLE
Chapter 3: Organize, Market, and Sell Yourself
Sell benefits—not features
Companies hire employees for the benefits that their skills and experience can bring to the organization. Potential employers will be able to instantly link some of the qualifications on your resume to benefits. For example, everyone recognizes the benefits associated with management experience or an accounting degree.
However, it will be more difficult for your readers to perceive the benefits of other qualifications. In these cases, you may want to fill in the blanks. And you can do this without adding a lot of extra verbiage to your resume.
Suppose that you are a real whiz with spreadsheets. You are the person whom everyone calls when there is a difficult data analysis task to be performed. A row of doorstop-sized manuals for Microsoft Excel line your desktop.
On one hand, you could simply state that you have spreadsheet skills:
Strong Microsoft Excel skills
This isn’t bad, but not everyone will immediately visualize the benefits associated with “strong Microsoft Excel skills.” By itself, this verbiage describes a feature—not a benefit.
On the other hand, you could “actionize” the skill, and tie it to some specific task. Rather than simply stating that you have the skills, let the reader of your resume know a bit about what you can do with them:
“Use advanced Microsoft Excel skills to conduct cost analyses.”
The person reading the actionized version will say, “Gee, we do a lot of cost analysis. We could really use this candidate.” A knowledgeable person would of course draw the same conclusion from “strong Microsoft Excel skills”—but don’t count on every resume screener being a knowledgeable reader. As discussed in a subsequent section, many resume screeners have a distinct lack of knowledge about the work done in the functional areas of the organization.
Copyright 2006 Beechmont Crest Publishing