If Your Job Search Is a Sales Process, Then Your Resume Is Your Marketing Brochure
Your resume is a vital step in your marketing process. It"s your brochure that tells about the product (you). It"s less about you and your history, and more about what you can offer your potential employer. It"s important that it"s clear, easy to understand, not too busy, and it should describe those key pieces about the product that make it interesting. Keep it brief (no more than 1-2 pages), focused, and incorporate bullet points and white space.It should also tell what the product is used forð€¦that"s your objective statement. Essentially ,it"s advertising. It"s got to capture the attention of your reader and lure him or her into reading the rest, and give him a framework for what he"s seeing: What is this product for? "This product is a great medical sales rep." Or, "this product is a marketing person," "this product is a social media expert," or "this product is an operations manager." (Much more simplistic than you would write, but you get the driftð€¦) It needs to say what the product is, and then give supporting information about the product.  But it must be compelling, and as unique as you can make it.
Many times, that means giving past performance measures. In a sales role, maybe it would say that you were in the "President"s Club, 2004-2005." In an operations role, maybe it would talk about the amount of labor you saved, or the amount of production you were able to increase. In marketing, it may talk about your conversion rates, or how you were able to make a flyer that increased profitability.  In all cases, the more you can include hard numbers that provide concrete evidence of your success, the better.  By that I mean sales numbers and rankings, of course, but also expense budgets, time or budget savings, revenue, profit, growth, goal attainment, and so on. There are a lot of ways you can quantify your achievements.
However, that doesn"t mean that you should put bright colors on it, or worse yet, your picture. Don"t stray too far from the black and white. Having said that, I have seen a few examples of color used in a graph that was a powerful representation of performanceð€”but you must be careful with something like that. Definitely stay away from the "too creative."
No matter what, your resume should say who your product is, what your product"s good for, and why they ought to buy your product.