Make your resume stand out

Careerbuilder.com's Jason Lovelace gives job seekers advice on how to make their resume stand out.

How do you make your resume stand out with so much competition? We are talking this morning with Jason Lovelace. He’s been with us, um, for the past several hours here. We appreciate you. He is the Area Vice President in Chicago with careerbuilder.com. We’ve been hooking you up here live on the air with people who need some help with their resumes.

Now we have Jennell Floyd on with us. Jennell Floyd, thank you for being here. You go right ahead. He has, uh, looked at your resume. You go right ahead and ask him here live what your question is about your resume?

Good morning and thank you(Good morning),my question is that I think I have done a pretty good job of selling my skills, outlining my experience, and I need to know what's missing on my resume?

Ok, that's a great question, Jannell. First of all, you know I did review your resume and congratulations on your upcoming degree; it looks like you are graduating in June of this year. So that's, that's a big feat in itself but I took a look at your resume and the good news about your resume is that you do have a lot of important key words and information that should be at the top for recruiters to see. The unfortunate piece about your resume is that you are not doing a great job of marketing yourself, and what I mean is I'll just give a couple of cosmetic information.

First of all, the top of your resume. You have your contact information and it really takes up the first five to ten percent of that first page. It's basically wasted space. You wanna try to condense that and make it a little bit more appealing.

The other thing is there is really no attention grabber, why you? Why would a company select you? The other thing that you do is you highlight some of your awards and recognition, but you could probably do a better job of really showcasing those, letting companies know who you are, the accolades that you’ve had throughout your career and really again highlighting those different points.

And then the final thing from a cosmetic standpoint is you’re all paragraphs in your resume and to a recruiter, time is money, and when they are sifting through resumes, you've gotta grab their attention. You should put bullet points with different things that you’ve accomplished but don't expect them to read through paragraph after paragraph at each individual job. I think a couple of those things will help you and it should rise your resume to the top.

Ok, some good advice from Jason Lovelace there in Chicago, and Jannell, good luck to you, I hope you get the job that you want.(Thank you)Thanks for calling in.