From the course: Resume Makeover

Ask these three people to review your resume

From the course: Resume Makeover

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Ask these three people to review your resume

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- If you ask 10 people to review your resume, guess what'll happen? You will get a bunch of wildly varying advice, some of which will be contradictory, and some of it will be just bad. In fact, the more eyeballs you have on your resume and the more people offering their input all at once, the more overwhelmed you'll likely become. Now, this doesn't mean you shouldn't ask people for their input, not at all. Getting people that you know and trust to review this masterpiece can be quite useful, but I would limit the number of people that you ask to three, and here's who I'd ask first. Number one, the grammar whiz. We all have that eagle-eyed family member or friend who can spot a dangling participle a mile away. Ask them to take a look. Of course, you can invite them to share feedback beyond the nitty gritty grammar edits, but lean on this person for their proofreading prowess. The second person I'd ask, if you know one, is a recruiter or HR pro. This person will likely know what's what in terms of the resume scanning software or the ATS and let you know if they see any structural or formatting red flags that may prevent your resume from transitioning successfully through the ATS and into the hands of actual humans. Recruiters and HR people generally look at lots of resumes and may have great feedback based on what they see on the resumes of other successful candidates, and finally, consider having a hiring manager or an executive leader take a peek at your finished product. This is probably the most typical reviewer people approach for resume feedback, and it's not a bad idea. A hiring manager or other higher up leader will, of course, be able to tell you what they like to see on a resume and what, from their perspective, makes a resume a standout. Just realize that business leaders, they don't necessarily have much exposure to the steps that come before that resume lands on their desk. In fact, they may even encourage you to make edits that aren't ATS friendly or those that minimize your resume's impact in the early screening stages. So you can see how having these varied perspectives might help you and how having too many perspectives may fast become problematic. So be strategic about who you ask, thank them profusely, and then follow your gut on which edits to incorporate.

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