From a Recruiter: What Makes Someone Stand Out?

A little over a year ago, I posted a “Looking for work” flag for recruiters up on LinkedIn. I waited. But, weirdly enough, not for long.

Within a week, a recruiter messaged me. They walked me through the application process and sent me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I’m sure they had told me what made me stand out, but I couldn’t remember. Whenever students or alumni ask me, “How did you get that job?” I never really had an answer except an awkward, “Well, uh, a recruiter found me.”

I decided they deserved a better answer. So I messaged the recruiter and asked what made me stand out. This is what they told me:

1. Explain your experiences

They said the biggest difference in my profile from others’ was that each of my job titles had bullet points, describing details of my work.

Recruiters are trying to understand you, get to know you. The bullet points helps them quickly learn what you did for your experience that made it worth listing.

If your next question is, “What do I put in the bullet points?” I have an answer for that too: keep a career journal. I go over this more in My Career Tips, but here’s the rundown:

Regularly write down your achievements for each experience (excluding trade secrets and technologies you cannot disclose publicly). Ask yourself, “How did I bring value to the company? How did I save them money?”

For each job, narrow that list down to your top 2 to 3 points. That’s the points to put underneath the job title on your resume!

2. Self-awareness and integrity

I’m not saying this in a self-righteous, “Go out and get some” way. Because (chances are) you already have self-awareness and integrity.

Perhaps you’re just hesitant when to show it. I know I’ve struggled in the past with being too bashful in networking and interviews. Both that and overcompensated confidence can turn recruiters off.

This can be handled in many ways. The recruiter told me how I did, when rating my knowledge of technologies on a scale of 1 to 10:

It’s important to know what you don’t know. You may feel comfortable with a technology or piece of software, but step back and ask yourself: do I really know as much as I feel I do?

If the answer is “yes,” then show that in the interview! When one young applicant claimed he knew Perl backwards and front, my dad - the company Perl expert - was asked to give him all the technical questions. And the applicant passed!

Put your best foot forward. Not a dishonest or hesitant one.

3. Demonstrative Experience

The recruiter also noted how my experiences made me stand out. To summarize – and give you something more useful than “go to X college and company Y” – it wasn’t about the experiences themselves, but what they demonstrated.

The recruiter noted:

• One former company I worked at has a strong reputation for creating quality products. That indicated that I could do the same.

• The recruiter knew about my college and degree and, knowing other employees with similar ones, had an understanding of what kind of quality education I got.

• Another listed experience told them that I had done “low supervision, high trust” style work (see integrity and self-awareness). Nothing relieves a manager more than an employee working with little direction.

So just lie, put those types of things on your resume, and you’re good right?

Surely it will work…

Until the interview. The recruiter’s impactful sentence was that “Once we got on the phone, you confirmed so much of the things above.”

Recruiters and interviewers have been around the block. Like my Dad's story, you may just be interviewed by the company’s expert in what you claim to know. They’ve seen patterns in which companies and colleges make good employees.

While past experiences don’t necessarily define someone’s potential, it can certainly indicate it. This is why resumes and interviews go hand-in-hand.

In an interview, an applicant with my same college, degree, and past companies may leave the recruiter unimpressed. Someone with none of those things could blow the recruiter’s expectations away with their skills and values.

That’s the difference between indicators and reality. Indicators, from a resume or profile, ease recruiters’ worries and gets one’s foot in the door. But the interview grounds that resume to reality.

So keep sharing your potential. Make your resume and profile shine. Articulate all your good traits in the interview. You got this!

If you liked this, read more of my career tips in Giving Back: My Career Tips.