There are an abundance of jobs paying six figures in the marketplace, but you must have your best 6-figure resume available to make it to the top of the stack.
Make sure your resume is handcrafted and fully tells the story of your career journey and represents you and your unique abilities. Invest the time and resources into handcrafting a uniquely distinctive resume that shows your worth and shows the employer who you are as a person and prospective employee.
Here are a few of our top tips for creating your 6-figure resume and landing a high paying job:
1. Custom Craft Your resume
To qualify for high-paying six-figure jobs you don’t want a cookie cutter, plain ole’ resume. Have you ever noticed how you often cringe when you come across a generic article or marketing email? That’s how most hiring managers react when they come across a generic resume, they cringe before throwing it to a pile of other similar resumes. Your resume should tell a story – YOUR individual story that immediately reveals to the employer who you are, why you are amazing, and the skills you bring to the table.
Use all the tools at your disposal to ensure your resume is unique and paint the picture of the employee that the company needs. A few key things to include are a strong professional summary, measurable accomplishments, leadership skills, relevant industry experience and personalization to the job/company you desire.
2. Research the Company
Six-figure earners must be thorough. If you want to be a six-figure earner, take the time to research the company before throwing in your resume.
Researching the company you are applying to is the best way to show how you could deliver value. Find out the challenges the company is facing and use your resume and cover letter to highlight these challenges and offer solutions to how you would help resolve these challenges if given the opportunity.
Additionally, every company has a specific mission highlighted in their mission statement, find out the company’s mission, and use your resume to showcase how you would fit into the company’s mission to help the company achieve its goals.
3. Make Your Resume Results-Focused
Most high-paying jobs are about results. Your resume must show the value you will bring to the organization. The best way to do this in your resume is to ensure that you have a section, preferably towards the top of half of your resume, that clearly showcases the results you have achieved in your career. This can be as simple as a Key Accomplishments section with 3-5 bullets of your top accomplishments. Focusing on the results that you have achieved demonstrates your value up front.
4. Have an Amazing Tagline
Others would call this a USP, which is short for Unique Selling Proposition. Applying for a new job is a lot like selling. Imagine there are farmers on a market selling their cattle. Each farmer is displaying an ordinary cow with the usual and ordinary colors of brown or black. A few minutes later a new farmer arrives with a pink cow, who do you think people will flock to, the farmers with the brown and black cows or the one with the pink cow?
As a job seeker, you are the farmer and your resume is your cow. You can choose to keep it ordinary by just doing the basics or make it unique by going the extra mile, which attracts the attention of Hiring Managers.
Your USP is a short statement no longer than a tweet residing right at the top of your resume that answers the key question, “Who are you and why should we hire you?”.
5. Make Sure Your Resume is Scannable
Most employers today use some form of Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to scan resumes for applicant feasibility before it gets to the Hiring Manager’s desk. For this reason your resume must have the most important skills from the job announcement or industry to ensure that you get the proper credit for your experience in your resume by using the appropriate keywords. Additionally, you should steer clear of all acronyms, as not all ATS and tracking systems can pick them up. Lastly, things like your headings, resume format and job titles are also important in making sure your resume is properly scannable.
If possible, before submitting your resume to any position, review the job announcement and ensure that you identify the main skills and keywords that the job is seeking. Ensure that all of those keywords and skills are identified clearly in the contents of your resume.
6. Be Professional in Tone and Presentation of your Resume
It’s important to know that your resume is not just any document, it’s a business document. This means you need to write it in a professional business tone with no clichés or filled with buzzwords. And not just that, but ensure you aren’t using a resume format that is not easily readable or includes inappropriate nonstandard material.
You can’t afford to use gimmicks or a funny picture or anything like that. Yes, the 21st-century media culture has made it seem like employers can accept anything, which isn’t the case. Most employers are still old school and expect the professionalism from their future employees before they can take them in.
7. Quality over Quantity
This is one classic mistake we’ve seen being made by many job seekers. They tend to focus on quantity as compared to quality. They want to include everything they can about their life including their driver’s license number, national id and everything else. That won’t always work.
Focus on the important aspects related to the job and cut the rest. As a rule of thumb, your resume should not be longer than three pages and it should go back no longer than the last 10-15 years of experience. The employer isn’t really concerned with your first job as a temp or intern 20 years ago, however they would like to know as much information about your abilities as a Director or Supervisor. Be sure to include the most relevant experience and technical and leadership skills. Remember, short and sweet is better and can make a significant impression on the employer.
8. Leadership Skills are Key
At this level, the employer is looking for a candidate who demonstrates leadership and accomplishments, so listing our and demonstrating your leadership capabilities, skills, positions and even specialized training in your resume is critically important.
Remember, even if you have never been a supervisor, you most likely have exhibited leadership in an organization. Think about a time you lead a project, that leadership course you took, or even use this as an opportunity to highlight some of your essential leadership capabilities like strong negotiation, accountability, ethical compass, etc.
9. Get your Resume Reviewed
Before sending out your Resume, it’s important to get it reviewed. Many people can help you out with this from your co-workers, friends, and family members or of course there are professional resume services like DMV Resumes that can provide a professional consultation and review of your resume. There are also free services like Grammerly that offer grammar check services.
Your perception of your resume can be sympathetic and positive since you are the one who wrote the resume. Another person will be able to pick out your mistakes and correct you where necessary thus helping you improve. Remember, you are trying to get a six-figure job, being thorough is a necessity.
10. Use Measurable Accomplishments in Your Resume
When listing your accomplishments in your resume make sure that you use not just qualitative descriptions of your accomplishments, but you also include the quantitative measures. For example, if you increased sales… by how much? What %? Over what time period? Using quantitative descriptors when including your accomplishments will demonstrate the true value of your skills.
Conclusion
To conclude, getting a six-figure job can be simple if you put in the effort into designing a unique 6-figure resume to tailor it into a 6-figure job magnet. We hope these tips will help you out as you set out to advance your career.
