Getting your resume right takes a lot of care, however it is not a difficult task if you follow the right steps.
Knowing the best ways to optimize a resume is important if you want to quickly and easily apply for the perfect job when the opportunity arises. Time is often of the essence when job hunting, so this can be crucial.
We’ve highlighted 5 things you should always do on your resume when you want to stand out to hiring managers. Find out what you can quickly do to your document today to make your CV really shine.
1. Organize Your Template to Perfection
Good organization is one of the first things that your resume needs to achieve. In order to get noticed and to highlight the correct facets of your career so far you need to get everything in order on the page.
Firstly, this requires reverse-chronological design in most cases, with your newest experience first and your older career history further down the page. This ensures the first thing that the employer sees are the details from your most recent career when they review your file.
Aside from your experience, it’s important to organize all your information in a tidy one column or two column template design. This is where using a resume builder can be a big help, as it’ll aid you in quickly and easily experimenting with few different formats until you find the ideal layout for your specific needs.
2. Target Jobs Surgically With Your Resume
Every employer is only interested in one thing; what you can bring to their company. Therefore, it is highly important that your resume is perfectly tailored for the specific job that is on offer.
This sounds tricky, but is actually easier than it seems. It’s also well worth your time if you want to get hired fast.
The best way to make sure you can quickly and easily make your resume as relevant to employers as possible is by creating a master list of your skills and experience. That way, you’ll be able to carefully pick and choose the most effective information to include on your document as you prepare it.
This does require editing your resume every time you apply for a new job. Yet, considering 18% of employers consider using a generic resume a deal-breaker, the odds will be on your side if you do tailor your document.
3. Draw Employers in With a Strong Summary Statement
A lot of people don’t think much about the resume summary statement or objective statement. However, it’s something that can be used to immediately get employers to take notice of your profile.
This section is the first thing most recruiters will see on the page when they open your resume for the first time. Given that most employers only spend 7.4 seconds reading applications on average, this might make or break your chances.
The resume summary is your perfect opportunity to create excitement in your job candidacy from the go. If you carefully highlight demonstrable results that the company is looking for or you can quickly highlight a key skill or qualification that would mark you as an exceptional applicant this can give you a real boost.
You may only have 2-3 sentences available in your resume summary but be sure to make them count if you want to get results.
4. Get the Most Important Keywords on Paper
Adding the right keywords to your resume may sound like a no-brainer but it’s become evermore important in recent years. This is thanks to the rise of the machines.
The machines in this case are Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), which are now used by over 98% of Fortune 500 companies. These filter through applications submitted electronically and check for errors and how well resumes fit the available position’s requirements.
If your resume has errors in it or too few relevant keywords or expressions, you won’t make the cut. This is usually the fate of 75% of applications submitted, with only around 25% being looked over by a human recruiter on average.
As you can see, it’s essential that you use the right words for your industry and career path to avoid making your resume sound too generic. No matter if you’re an engineer, IT consultant, coffee barista, or an accountant, this could be the difference between a job interview or silence from a recruiter.
5. Keep Your Resume Concise
It may feel natural to add as much information as possible to your resume. However, this is a bad idea.
Less is more when you’re applying for a job. Employers only want to know the details that will tell them whether you’re right for the position or not, anything extra should be cut.
Generally, you should aim to keep your resume down to just 1 page in length. You can extend to a second page but remember, every extra section increases the chance of the recruiter skimming over something important.
Try and be a little strict with what appears on the final draft before you send it in. By keeping things clean and concise you’ll be in a much better position to get through to the next stage of the hiring process.
As you can see, your resume doesn’t need too many special touches to be extra effective. Yet, these 5 small and simple tweaks can make a big difference and should be in your mind when you rework your document for your next job application.