As much as you may want to land your next job, you have to feel for the person who is reading your resume on the other side of the hiring table.

I can attest to the brain drain that happens after reading hundreds of resumes with similar phrases and nearly identical conventions… giving the impression that they were all written by the SAME person!

Generating attention during this hectic job market requires shaking things up a bit, and deviating from what you’ve seen everyone else use in a resume and cover letter… to put it mildly.

Here are a few ideas to help you think outside the template:

>> Introduce your resume with a specific, branded title.

Pursuing a global business development or marketing role—one with authority for trend watching and sales in industry verticals?

Sure, you can resort to Business Development Executive, but Director Strategic Sales packs more impact, plus retains the keywords (Director and Sales) that are needed at your career level.

There’s always more than one way to introduce yourself. Project Manager is fairly specific, but you can give yourself a bit more latitude with a general title such as Project Executive, with a second line that lists Portfolio Manager, Project Director, and PMO Manager as job targets.

>> Alter your resume headings for a powerful impact.

There’s no law that requires your resume to use sections such as Experience, Education, and so forth.

 If you’re in sales, you can use the title Relevant Revenue Highlights to describe a selected list of sales successes, while an Operations Manager can create a section entitled Operational Productivity Improvements to show important achievements.

Light on experience? Group your training under keywords that make sense to employers, such  as Sales Education, Leadership Training, or Technology Knowledge.

>> Give recruiters something else to read besides your job titles.

Are your job titles very general, such as Associate Analyst or Senior Consultant? Help employers out (please!) by specifying exactly what you do in your career.

Get creative and add another line underneath your real title with more descriptive terms such as Project Manager, Product Development, or Business Process Reengineering.

>> Change your cover letter’s enclosure line.

Adding just “Resume” with the notation Enc. after your signature doesn’t quite cut it as a parting shot.

How about Enc: Business Development Leadership Resume or Enc: Senior Leadership Qualifications Summary instead?

Don’t forget the power of the P.S. as well. Marketing studies have proven over and over that this may be the most-read sentence of your entire cover letter.

Branch out a little and try a grand finale such as “I’ll be glad to share my ideas for bringing XYZ Company’s Western region revenue to #1 in the nation. May we talk?”

In conclusion, there’s no single RIGHT way to create a resume that gets attention. Be sure to add some flair and road-test different ways of stating the same information – and you can easily end up with a better response.

An award-winning executive resume writer, Laura Smith-Proulx has achieved a 98% success rate winning interviews for top CTO, CIO, CEO, CFO, CEO, SVP, Sales, IT, and R&D jobs at Fortune-ranked corporations. An 8-time credentialed resume writer and the Executive Director of An Expert Resume, she has been featured in more than 200 media outlets and publications, with resume examples published in numerous career bestsellers.