Writing Your Resume; Use the “So What?” Method

Your resume has to tell potential employers what you can do for them. Yet people still fall into the trap of writing sentences that describe their job duties instead of their skills. A simple way to avoid this is to use the “so what” method of writing a resume.

The “so what” method makes you think about each statement and why it is important to an employer. For example, this is a phrase taken from a resume sent to me for an evaluation: “Provided production workers with needed inventory information”. Interesting statement but how is that relevant to a potential employer, especially since they probably don’t need you to provide production workers with inventory information? Let’s fix it by asking “so what does that mean to me”, the employer.

Digging deeper, we find that this person interfaces with over 15 workers daily to convey this information, usually between production shifts, and the information has to be retrieved from 2 different systems and had better be accurate. So what comes out of this? The following skills are illustrated:

• Recognized for ability to interface with wide range of personnel and reliably relay production-critical information during quick 10-minute shift changes.

• Highly computer proficient with the ability to quickly learn and navigate proprietary production and inventory control systems.

Which statements do you think would most impress an employer? So just ask yourself “so what does that mean to the employer?” after you write your statements and your resume will dramatically improve.