Using Tough Interview Questions to Improve Your Resume

A resume can be improved on a variety of levels. The basic level typically involves spelling, grammar and other language improvements. The goal of basic resume improvements is to eliminate simple errors that would otherwise create the impression in the eyes of an employer that you lack an attention to detail or have written communication problems.

The medium level of resume improvement focuses on completeness. Ensuring you have documented all your skills, certifications, licenses and duties will improve a resume immediately. Many resumes are weak on information, that is, there is more white space than text on the resume page. Many do not even include the most basic software skills. The goal of medium improvements is to "beef up" an underwritten resume so it mirrors the skills and experience cited in a job ad by placing them on the resume. The medium level frequently moves a job seeker from the rejection pile to the initial group of candidates to call back.

Both the basic and medium levels of resume improvement do make a difference. But would these improvements move you to the handful of candidates who are invited to onsite interviews and have a shot at a job offer? Not always. Competition is tough nowadays and employers screen lots of resumes. So, is there any other way a job seeker can improve his resume to make it sing with hiring appeal? To get a resume that sings with appeal, you need to go to the advanced level of improvements.

The advanced level of resume improvements tells a potential employer not only what you are capable of doing, but also how well you performed based on past work experience. This seems like quite a hill to climb. It's not as hard as it sounds. By looking at the toughest interview questions, we can get an idea what employers really want to know about a job candidate. And then crafting answers to these questions and placing them strategically on a resume can make a good resume a killer resume. Let's look at a few tough interview questions.

The toughest interview questions are behavioral questions. What are they? Why do they exist? Behavioral questions are a fairly recent trend. In the past, basic and proficiency questions were commonly asked in job interviews. What are you good at doing? What are you good points and bad points? These questions often elicit memorized or canned answers which do not really help the employer determine how well you will perform on the job. The answers to behavioral questions cannot be memorized. They require you to answer about a specific experience you had on the job in a structured answer format. They require you to explain the (1) problem, (2) the challenge of solving it and (3) the final outcome. Here are a few common behavioral interview questions:

• Please relate a work situation where you were graceful under pressure?
• How do you overcome errors at work?
• Provide an example where a goal was set for you. How did you meet it?
• Tell me how you came to making an unpopular decision and how did you make it popular?
• Give an instance where you had a disagreement with a co-worker. How did you work through it?
• Relate a time when you had a difficult customer and how you overcame the difficulty?

So, how can we use these questions to improve a resume. Let's work through the following question: Provide an example where a goal was set for you. How did you meet it?

Let's say you worked for a school system that had a tight budget. And all school departments were told that they had to find a way to reduce costs--this is the goal or the problem. All businesses or schools who are instructed to reduce costs have problems doing so --this is the challenge. But, by being clever and conducting some research, let's say you found a way to buy a different kind of office materials that would save money -- this is the solution. Condensing this story a bit, here's how a computer technician at a school system phrased the answer and placed it on his resume:

• Cut costs by over 200% by recommending to the School District to switch to recycled paper and toner cartridges.

Cutting costs is a simple way to demonstrate to a potential employer what you can do for them upon hiring. But not all things can so easily be reduced to cost cutting or told in a single line. Here's another example of the advanced level of resume improvement. In this example, the employee had worked for a business publication that was trying to find ways to obtain more advertisers. This employee helped the advertising sales people by giving them information in a spreadsheet regarding which advertisers were renewing their contracts:

• Increased Advertising Contract Renewals by tracking the success rate of external clients in both the print and online publications and providing the account executive and external clients this originally sourced data. Result: improved client visibility and satisfaction to enable the account executive to increase contract renewals thereby protecting existing revenue streams.

The advanced level of  resume improvement is not always easy to do but it is the most effective at demonstrating your hiring appeal. Many people can implement the advanced level on their own. But in cases where you can't, it is useful to talk to an expert resume writer who can not only identify these important stories, but also craft them in appropriate language for a resume.