🚨Before Your Resume Can Stand Out, It Needs To Blend In
How do you make your resume stand out? While differentiating from the competition is an important step in any form of marketing (and yes, your resume is a form of personal marketing), before thinking about how to stand out - you actually have to learn to blend in. Hear us out.
The resume is a little bit of a test: how well do you know the game? Not just the game of making an awesome resume, but the game of making an awesome resume in your specific industry and hoped-for working culture. People assume there is one way to format a resume, and a best way to format a resume, and that’s that. But just because it boxes you in, does not mean the form is boxed in. On the contrary, resumes differ widely from industry to industry. Even in STEM, the way that neuroscientists format theirs is probably different from how math teachers format theirs. This is because of micro-cultures. Resumes are a reflection of how each micro-culture, e.g. neuroscience, likes to tell its story.
First, you have to learn the game. Your job is to identify how your microculture tells its story. What is an HR manager, or whoever your hiring stakeholder is, expecting to see? Before you want to differentiate yourself, you actually need to blend in. You need to show them that you belong in this pile of excellent candidates. If the person hiring is looking to know your education and corresponding accolades right off the bat, then list it at the top of the page. If top candidates in your field list their research interests, add that in! Get to know the unique form your specific micro-culture operates in, and hit the marks.
How do you do this? The best way to do this is to email people you respect in the field (e.g. professors, previous employers - even for internships) and ask them for guidance in the form of seeing the structure of their resume or, if it doesn’t breach confidentiality, any resumes they feel have stood out. A resume does feel like an intimate thing, so make sure you’re making the ask of someone who genuinely wants to help you succeed. See if you can gather a few (say, three) standout resumes that closely align to what you’ll be applying for or where you aspirationally want to get to. Then, borrow from them to build a resume that says you should be among the shortlisted candidates to go to interview. At that point: you stop blending, and focus on standing out.
