The new global context demands a resume tailored to new technologies, market needs, and the soft and hard skills that companies are requiring now. The new VUCA reality (for its acronym: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), forces us to re-invent ourselves every day, to always continue learning, to unlearn and relearn, and that is why I have prepared 5 relevant tips for the resume or this new era:
- Achievements and Results: The resume must be focused on real, verifiable or quantifiable achievements and results, or should be based on an important contribution to the company, i.e: impact on the technic or sales process, finance, organizational issues, internal communication, among others. It is no longer worth just a descriptive resume of daily activities, but one focused on individual, group, or organizational results.
- Soft Skills: Companies are valuing soft skills, given that some soft skills have an important impact on the economic success or the cultural strengthening of the company. The most in-demand soft skills are, among others: analytical capacity, critical analysis, orientation to results, ability to work as a team, negotiation skills, strategic planning, adaptation to changes, customer orientation, digital skills or creativity/innovation, depending on the profiles and levels of responsibility of the position.
- Refresher Courses: Not only a bachelor’s degree or higher technical degree is sufficient; it is important to have refresher courses, whether technological, technical courses on your specific subject, languages, or data analysis certifications, etc. Refresher courses related to your digital transformation are highly valuable, regardless of your career, since digital transformation is a topic tied to the human resource of the future.
- Concise Resume: Your resume should be brief, concise, generally one page, unless you have more than 8 or 10 years of experience, in which case it could exceed one page, although not necessarily. A 2-page resume is justified when your functions have been dense/complex, or when you have several people in charge, and/or when you have had more than three jobs with diverse functions, for example.
- Resume adapted to the Offer: Finally, you must adapt your resume to the job offer; you can have several models depending on the offers. Although the chronological resume is mostly used (starting from your current to oldest experience), do not rule out the functional resume, which is useful for certain profiles, based not on “chronology” but on segmentation of functions or skills. The functional resume applies when your work chronology has been irregular or discontinuous, or when your tasks have been the same for many years, in which case soft skills or virtues should be highlighted.
Take action to transform your resume, to give it the twist that companies require in the new context, train yourself strategically; you don’t have to spend too many years studying, just study what the market demands, even in short courses.
Take action to make your personal and professional brand more attractive, through an impactful resume: it is not just about the visual, which is important, but also about the keywords that influence your resume to rise its level in the selection process, in order to reach an interview and contribute to your next hiring.
Oscar Sánchez Calvo (Author)
Óscar Sánchez Calvo is CEO of Gamma Legal. Óscar has advised various multinational companies and mid and high-level executives on labor, human resources, corporate and international mobility aspects for more than 15 years in Latin America.
Óscar has reorganized departments based on human competencies, and has drafted employee regulations and compensation and labor benefits policies, associated with the international mobility of people, and the management and selection of talent. Óscar has a Master’s degree in HR from Centro de Estudio Garrigues (Madrid) and a Master’s degree in Law from EADA Business School (Barcelona).