The Resume Title (Your resume has one, right?)

By Soozy G. Miller, CPRW, CDCC, CDP

Let’s discuss the importance of the title on your resume.

If you don’t have a title on your resume, I recommend that you add one. The title goes at the top, below your contact information, and above the summary.

The title is important because it’s your second impression, after the overall look of your resume. Most resumes look bad and are a bit visually confusing, and the hiring team is used to that (unfortunately). So, if your resume gets through the applicant tracking system (ATS) – yay! – the first thing the hiring team looks for is a title, indicating that you’ve read (or at least skimmed) the job description and you know what you’re applying to.

Yes, the company’s ATS will probably read your resume title before any person ever sees it. Some ATS’s assign points to each feature of the resume that the company wants. For example, 5 points if the title matches the job posting. And 1 point for each keyword. So, because the title is at the top of the resume, if your title fits the job description, you get 5 points right away. If the ATS then finds a required skill on the resume, you get another point. And the scan goes on and on…

But, let’s say you have Vice President as the title and the title of the job you’re applying to is Vice President of Marketing. What does the ATS do? It might give you 3 out of 5 points. So that would mean that you’re behind anyone who put Vice President of Marketing as the title, but you’re ahead of people who didn’t put a title at all. You might still get through if you show marketing experience throughout other areas of your resume and in your skills section (hopefully your resume has one of those!).

And then if your resume gets through the ATS and is passed on to a person, that person is going to have a similar reaction: So this says Vice President. Did the person read the job posting? Do I now have to read through all of this resume to determine if this person has the VP-level of experience for marketing?

[Sigh.]

I’ll go one step further and recommend matching the title to the job posting and stopping there. Don’t add “Transformation Guru” or “Business Specialist” or any other descriptive words to the title. That will throw off the ATS and the hiring team. Just use the title of the job posting. Period.

There are some recruiters out there who won’t even consider a resume if the title doesn’t exactly match the job posting. Their thinking is, if the candidate doesn’t take the time to get to know our company and what we need, why should I consider the candidate?

Currently, with The Great Resignation in full swing, some of this might be a bit more flexible. But you get the idea.

Your title actually provides the very first words that the reader (software and human) will see. Now you see how important that is.

I recommend adding a focused title.

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Better job. More pay. More control.

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