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Your Audience

One of the biggest challenges about writing your resume is that you’re trying to write it for an “anonymous” audience. Unless you’re willing to go through a lot of effort rewriting it every time you send it, you’re trying to take a brief document that makes it appealing everywhere you send it – despite the fact that the audiences may be very different. However, you can simplify this a bit.

While there are lots of technologies and even more companies, there are only 4 major types of people who will view your resume, each with their own interests and goals.
  1. Hiring Managers
  2. Technical staff working for Hiring Managers
  3. Recruiters or Human Resources Personnel
  4. Resume Databases
Lots of times when you’re applying to a company, you’ll hit all four of these. Depending on the size of the company and the level of technical expertise, you may only hit a recruiter or hiring manager. If you have a really good idea of who will be seeing your resume, you can target it – but it’s hard to be sure. That being said, you should write your resume to appeal to each of these targets, since missing what any of them are looking for can keep you from getting an interview or phone screen.

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