What if Your Resume was backward?

8 tips to make your resume different.

KEEP YOUR RESUME SHORT, TWO PAGES MAX.

Story at a glance:

Stand out

Make a real impact

Differentiate yourself from others

Eight points to make your application different

What does it mean to have a backward resume or curriculum vitae?

Having seen so many CV’s coming past my desk during my over 20 years in multinational corporations. I wondered what would make a CV really stand out to me.

Resumes all look the same, they all have that same ‘cookie cutter’ format. What chance do you have if you are just one of a homogenous group of applicants? There are usually hundreds of applicants for any job and I think this will increase in the future unless you are in a highly and uniquely skilled industry, in which case, you can count yourself lucky.

One of the large multinational corporations I worked at taught us to save time by presenting our brand strategies and marketing plans backward.

What does presenting backward mean?

We had to start at the end, tell the board directors what we were doing upfront instead of building up to what we were doing and why we were doing it, because executives were extremely busy and time-poor in this organization, we had to get straight to the point.

If the directors had questions about the actionable parts of our plan, they would then ask more detailed questions. This saved time and was the same as managing by exception. Given that this company had many categories and products numbering in the tens of thousands, this worked particularly well.

Now let’s apply that thinking to your CV or resume.

Instead of the usual layout, I propose:

Start by collecting information

Research the company and product range, try the products, speak to users

Read up on the reviews of the company and its products

Learn as much as you can about the competitor products and try them too

Read the reviews and chat to users of competitor products

Research all you can from the website of the business you are aiming to join.

How do you find users of the products?

Depending on the industry, you can observe people purchasing them and then pretend to be doing an assignment and ask people about why they chose that product or service. People are more than willing to give their opinion on products, as long as it is not a highly personal product in the health care area.

Think about what you have learned from the above and observe the products or services at their point of sale in-store or at a franchise branch, etc.

Now start your resume with what you propose

After a quick one or two-line introduction of yourself and stating that you are most grateful that your resume has reached the reader. Start with the below:

(A caution here, do not be condescending or ‘know it all,’ write your recommendations as recommendations, these are your thoughts as a complete outsider, be humble but confident, it is a fine balance, but use more of a conversational tone.)

After your two-line introduction of yourself, start with how you think the company:

Can make more money selling

Enter adjacent industries or product categories you think may suit the brands

Can cut costs

Increase service levels

Increase customer happiness and keep them long term

Where you think competitors have weaknesses.

Where opportunities are in the market

Where you think the company or brands are at risk, and why you think so

Treating the company that you are potentially going to work for, as your own business, will give you an edge on others thinking that they are just applying for a job, for a position at some large company. Most business leaders look for initiative and people who think differently. This could be a way that you could stand out from the crowd.

If you keep sending out your CV or resume and keep getting knocked back, why not try something different? They say that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is called insanity, so why not refresh your approach?

My caution with the above is that you always remain humble, remember you are joining a company and an industry where people have years of experience, so remain conversational and inquiring always put forward your view and then ask their thoughts on what you have just said.

For example; “We have such a great brand of painkillers, I thought we should extend our brand into massage gels, I know a manufacturer who might pack for us, what do you think?”

Always ask other people’s opinions, people enjoy being seen as an expert and sharing their thoughts.

I hope this article was helpful and acts as a thought-starter, thank you for reading it.