Cater Your Resume

Cater your Resume

COM/295

12/08/14

Cater Your Resume

        Resumes are important to individuals looking for jobs or looking to change career paths. Learning to cater your resume towards a specific field is vital to succeed in getting through door.  Up to until now, I had never reflected it in that way.  My resume was just a basic summary of what I’ve done. However, now it has to translate to what I want to do. Having a few people review it, the consensus is to make sure you alter your resume towards the job that you want.

Why Cater?

        It took me a while to really understand the concept, but it does make sense. If you want a sales job, you should highlight your abilities with people and persuasion. You should highlight accomplishments with selling a product or beating a quota or deadline. You would show your competitive side and a hunger to win. However, if you are going for an analytical position, you should highlight your ability to see the details, your problem solving skills and your ability to read spreadsheets and data. So catering your resume actually highlights your skills and abilities towards that particular job.

I am changing my career industry now and it makes even more sense when you look at it as a whole. I am changing from a sales industry to an education industry. Two separate industries, but yet contain similar attributes with one another. However, students are not looking for teachers to push a product down their throats and teachers are not on a monthly quota. What they are into is knowledge, helping people expand it or gain it.

Let’s look at sales and compare it to education. You have to know your audience, teachers should know their students. Sales people need to know the products; teachers need to know the subject they are teaching. Sales people help sell the product, teachers help expand and push knowledge. Even though this sounds easy to do, putting it together on a resume is hard. The resume needs to sound less sales like and more teaching and nurturing like. This is why it is important to cater the resume towards the desired field. You must speak the same language as others in the industry or else it will get lost in translation.

Success with your resume will depend on how well you can craft it to cater to your desired job. This is why it is recommended to have a few different versions and to alter it to the jobs you are applying for. I in the midst of retooling my resume to experiences towards a more educationally based examples; this will help my target audience understand that I have relatable skills to perform the job. It will help to open opportunities for others to understand the importance of intertwining industries and skill sets.