A few years ago, when I started to get serious about my diet, I learned about a principle that made it a lot easier for me to stick to my diet. The 80/20 rule, or the pareto principle, states that 80% of results come from 20% of your effort. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, noticed that 80% of the peas that his garden produced came from just a few of his prized plants, about 20% of the total. Since then, the pareto principle has grown to be an accepted model in some industries. Microsoft once focused on the top 20% of their bugs and found that it reduced total errors by 80%. Investors often relax their clients after a stock falls by reminding them that 20% of their investments produce 80% of their profits. If you unlock your phone, you can see that 20% of your Tinder matches produce 80% of your regrets. You’ve seen this work in a number of contexts.
The 80/20 Rule is a way to quantify some thing we already know about the world around us: not all things are equal. There are some avocados that are never going to be picked at the grocery store. Some books are best left unfinished. Not everything is a great use of your time.
Now back to you getting that job. Time is a limited resource. If you can show employers that you know how to use time effectively by prioritizing on your resume, you may be able to convince them that you can prioritize for them as their employee. Prioritization is a soft skill. It’s an important skill to use in any workplace, but it is a vital skill to use on your resume. Prioritizing information on your resume not only illustrates a useful skill to employers, but it also makes for a more effective resume. Today we are going to talk about how you can use prioritization of information to illustrate an important skill on your resume and, at the same time, make it more effective at describing your value to an employer.
Previously, I’ve talked about how important it is to summarize information at the top of your resume. Having a section like this quickly lists a good number of reasons for having an employer continue to read your entire resume. If you aren’t offering them a reason to continue, they certainly are not going to hunt for one when they have a stack of fresh resumes blossoming with opportunity right next to them. You can take this approach and apply it to any and all of your resume sections. Let’s break down a few resume sections you might have and how to use prioritization to maximize the effect of that section.
Prioritization might have the largest effect on your work history. If you are looking for a position in the same industry, your most recent job probably looks great at the top of your work history. If you aren’t, then you are best served by having a more relevant position at the top of your work history. When you list the most relevant position first, you are prioritizing those skills over the skills of your most recent position. When your most recent job has nothing to do with where you want to be, yet it sits at the top of your work history, you are highlighting the fact that you have been out of the industry for some time. Perhaps you have, but your resume is the last place you want to call attention to this. “BUT MY RESUME IS CHRONOLOGICAL, MAX! THAT DOESN’T FIT. YOU BROKE IT,” you might be saying. Yes, reverse-chronological resumes are the most common ones out there, but there are no rules saying this has to be the norm or that it is required for any specific company. If it doesn’t work best for you, ditch it. You can apply this idea even further by only listing relevant positions under your work history. Perhaps you rename your work history to Professional Experience, where you describe relevant positions, and create a new section entitled work history, where you detail the companies who employed you and the dates of each (like in 5.1).
Here, we can see that this individual prioritized their Professional Experience by including their 3rd most recent position first. Clearly they are applying for a custodial position. They listed their experience as a Janitorial Supervisor first. This certainly does them more favors than their current job, Line Cook at Eaty’s, would do in that spot. They continued to prioritize by placing the jobs in an order that appears to show progression. Looking at this, one might assume that they started as an Environmental Services Aide, moved up to a better position doing something similar with a school district, and then found an opportunity as a Janitorial Supervisor. If you look at the work history, you can clearly see that they held the supervisor position before they were employed by the school district and that they are currently a Line Cook. This sequence might raise questions, but a reader would have to do some light investigating to find this. A majority of readers would read what they saw in the beginning and very few would get their eyes all the way to the bottom of the page. Another positive of prioritization is that all the good information goes at the top, where everyone starts reading, and all the bad information (if it must be included) goes at the bottom, where very few people will get to. Resumes completed in this format are also known as functional resumes.
Another section that would benefit from prioritization is your education and/or training section. The rule of thumb here is also to list your experience in reverse chronological order. Not everyone is best served by this rule. You can increase your chances of getting hired by prioritizing your education section as well. Your new rule of thumb should be to place the most relevant degree or training first. For example, you may have a Master’s degree in Environmental Science listed first when applying for a position as a manager for a bank. Perhaps you are hoping that master’s can increase where you start on the payscale. If you have a more relevant undergraduate degree, say in finance or accounting, you would be best served by having that listed first. It’s entirely up to you if you want to include any information that is not directly related to the position you are applying for, but don’t expect it to do you any favors. Many times people expect more opportunities by listing more trainings, certificates, and education on their resumes, but there are many reasons why this is not automatically true. For starters, you do not want employers to get the impression that you are overqualified. This might lead them to believe you will not be staying in that position for too long as you look for something that you are qualified for, or that your salary demands may be higher than they are willing to provide. Further, if you seem to be hoarding certifications you are more likely to be labeled a master-of-none than a jack-of-all-trades. To avoid any of these scenario’s, just listing the relevant education and trainings will only show employers what you are ready to contribute, not a laundry list of reasons why you might be unhappy with the position later. If you keep only the relevant items, you have a list of things that give the employer confidence that you can do the job. Adding items not relevant to the position can give the employer uncertainty about your commitment to the job. Finally, really think about the impact of your resume’s education or training section. Does it have a greater impact when it is placed before or after your work history? The answer lies in the relevance. If your most relevant degree or training is more relevant to the position you are applying for than your most relevant job, having your education listed first would be helpful. If you have a summary section, and you should, you can preview your education section by listing relevant degrees and certifications in the summary as well. I recommend you do this if there are required degrees or certifications necessary to qualify for the position you are applying for.
Prioritizing is a useful skill wherever you apply it. Finding as many places as possible where you can integrate this principle onto your resume might be the most profitable place for a job seeker to use it. Next week, we will look at a deeply important document: the cover letter. It’s an often-overlooked document that can make an okay resume into a great one. Cover letters can put your resume into a context a hiring manager might not have. It serves the purpose of filling the reader in about some things that might not make sense to put on a resume, but will increase your chances of being hired. Does everyone read your cover letter? No, but next week we’ll be talking about how to make the people that do read your cover letter love your resume even more.