How to get shortlisted for a role? ✨
Actionable advice that has worked for GrowthX members.
Welcome to member exclusive weekly newsletter by GrowthX. Its designed to help you in every career move - transitions, promotions & more.
Every week, we will bring you a topic that will help you think better about your career progression & we will bring these after learning from 100s of GrowthX members we speak to every single month.
Onto today’s piece - cracking resumes.
Resumes are important, yet they are often the most neglected. After speaking to so many members every week who want their resumes reviewed - we have core insights on why a resume is/isn’t shortlisted.
The most common resume mistakes —
- Using the same resume for every role.
- Listing tasks w/o impact. No numbers.
- Readability, visual presentation, & grammar
- ChatGPT to write the entire resume
Resumes = the professional you in 7 seconds.
JTBD is to -
1. Establish relevance for the role.
2. Highlight your fit Vs the role requirements.
3. Show who you are, what you've achieved, and where you've thrived.
Plus, resumes are looked at every single interview round that you go through for a specific role. It’s not just to clear screening but also to set the right odds in each round.
5-step framework to resumes.
Based on resumes that have helped members crack roles at CRED, Zerodha, Google, Flipkart, Licious, Meesho & 100+ more. Trust the process 💙
Step 1→ Understand the Job Description
We covered this in the last week’s edition. Reading between the lines of a JD is key to learning what the hiring manager is thinking. Plus, you can watch the live demos of how to analyse a Job description by AP on ELEVATE.
Knowing the role well is the key to understanding what your pitch will be, helps you tailor your resume and make it relevant to the pain points the company is trying to solve.
Step 2→ Show the Impact
There's no substitute for showing numbers & metric impact from past roles. Some examples from GrowthX members who secured roles at CRED, Licious & HROne with these resumes 👇🏻
Step 3→ Add Proof of Work to build trust
Built a product & launched it? Have you designed a launch strategy? Have an onboarding teardown? Solved retention in the last role? Solved free to paid user journey? Increased ARPU? Add it under the proof of work.
The GrowthX Immersion & CRAFT proof of work will come in handy. The hiring manager for a critical role will always skim through it - worth doing this step. AP wrote a whole blog about it, you should give it a read.
Step 4→ Don’t mess up the basics
You have the data and proof of work, but if the reviewer struggles to read your resume, it's a problem. 6 out of 10 resumes have mistakes across —
Font style, size, colour, line spacing.
keep it standard. Here are a few templates.
Length - No more than 1 or 2 pages.
Every 10 years of work ex should be 1 page.
Grammar - run it through Grammarly.
Check for spelling/punctuation errors.
Clear & concise language.
No random sentences.
Curate your resume for the role.
You will truly stand out - it’s worth it.
Layouts - use basic layouts.
No fancy stuff. No design competition.
There is too much debate going on Twitter/ LinkedIn about ATS (application tracking system). Here’s a quick explanation of how ATS works. Run your resume through it & optimise but a high score on those sites doesn't guarantee success.
Step 5 → Send your resumes for the right roles.
Ensure your profile aligns at least 70% with the role's expectations and requirements. Applying without fitment can do more harm than good. Imagine the same company finding your resume across every role they have open. - they will feel you are not thoughtful - ATS will catch this multi-role application and is most times a soft red flag.
Now, this feels like a lot of work.
Gone are the days when a template or ChatGPT version would suffice. What worked until 2023 won't work now. The demand and supply of roles is skewed, an average role receives 1000+ applications.
Featured roles this week ✨
Product Manager at Foxtale | 💰 Up to 30LPA
Growth Marketing Manager at The Pant Project | 💰 Up to 24LPA
Product Analyst at AB InBev | 💰 Up to 20LPA
Growth Marketing at Nxtwave | 💰 Up to 18LPA
That's it for this week. See you in the next one.
Got something on your mind? Want to talk? Just hit reply.