Useful tips make your resume stand out
Useful tips make your resume stand out
A resume is one of the documents that help you land a job by making a strong first impression. Recruiters go through numerous resumes when they are shortlisting candidates; therefore, the resume you submit should be aesthetically appealing in a professional manner and highlight all the important achievements and experiences that are necessary to land the job. Likewise, recruiters prefer resumes that are well summarized and easy to read, because it helps them to easily identify whether you are a good fit to be shortlisted. Resume writing can be an overwhelming task and if it is unattended with necessary importance, your job hunt is going to be ineffective. Let’s discuss below a few valuable tips that would help you to improve your resume.
Keywords on the job posting
The first step you should take is carefully going through a couple of job postings that you are interested in applying to. You should have a thorough understanding of the keywords that are being used by the potential employers in these job postings and include the same keywords in your resume wherever relevant. These keywords can be job-related nouns or action verbs that describe skills and qualifications or experiences required for the role. By combining these keywords and action verbs may help you grab the attention of employers that are in search of candidate profiles.
Industry-specific resumes
The next important point would be to have your resume tailor-made to fit your industry standards and best practices. This aspect can vary from industry to industry; as a couple of examples, a resume that is related to the information and technology industry should strongly highlight hard skills or technology stacks that candidates possess and the approaches followed to use them in their work. Secondly, the arts and design industry-specific resumes are more focused on highlighting the candidate’s personality and explaining their creative processes. Similarly, sales and marketers should focus on highlighting how they have thought beyond numbers and how they have turned businesses towards profitability in an interesting way.
Professional look and feel
Professionalism should be maintained throughout your resume from start to the very end. Using a professional and consistent font style would be the first point to consider here. Since recruiters need to go through a large count of profiles daily, they prefer to have profiles that are clear and easily readable. Therefore, it is important to use a clear and basic font style like Arial or Calibri when writing your resume. Another important fact that should be considered is avoiding extraneous blank spaces in the document. Blank spaces tend to make your resume look sparse, raising a red flag.
Prioritizing what is important
Having all the relevant career and academic experience in a summarized form should be one of the key objectives of resume writing. Therefore, you must take a considerable amount of time to find out what you should prioritize over the extensive list of work and educational information. Prioritize the latest academic achievements that would be relevant to the applied job post. Including any information that is outdated and older than 10 years will not give any positive impact on your resume; therefore, continuously refer to the job posting and include the information, and experiences that are most relevant.
Use of language
The tone and the language used in resume writing must be compelling and interesting to read. It is not wrong to use passive voice in resume writing; however, the active voice tends to be livelier, and interesting to read. Using active language with powerful words such as achieved, earned, or accomplished will create a strong positive impression. Likewise, always be mindful to maintain the writing precisely to the point without making lengthy sentences. Avoid writing fluff words to fill up the resume and focus on showcasing your achievements and qualifications aligning with the requirements listed in the job posting.
Subheadings and sectioning
A resume that is well organized and sectioned has the potential of grasping more attention from recruiters and hiring managers. There are numerous resume templates that you can find online and start writing on. However, there are certain optional sections that you can decide freely and a couple of mandatory sections that play a vital role in your resume. The standard sections of a general resume would be contact information, summarized objective section, work experience, education, and other skills. Likewise, a couple of examples for optional sections would be, professional achievements, awards, and recognitions, volunteer work done, professional certificates, and licenses.
Limiting down to a single page
Single-page resumes are known to be more effective than lengthy resumes. One-page resumes have become a popular trend based on multiple reasons. The main point would be, how effectively it allows the recruiters to identify key qualifications and skills; for them to figure out instantly whether the profile will suit the job role. Secondly, the applicant has the chance to creatively arrange the sections based on the desired priority. However, there are a couple of important steps to follow to transform your resume into a single page. The formatting of a single-page resume is usually with shorter margins and smaller font sizes. Moreover, the contact information, summary, education, and work experience sections should be well condensed with mandatory details. Similarly, the midsections of the resume should be arranged with bullet points and columns.
Lastly, proofreading and seeking feedback
Once you complete your first draft, the document must be thoroughly proofread to fine-tune and make it error-free. Make a habit to always check your important documents like personal statements, resumes, and cover letters with a close colleague. It is a guaranteed fact that constructive feedback has the potential to make documents flawless. Do not forget the fact that the resume is the very first step in getting an interview with your potential employer. Therefore, make sure to do enough research about the employer and be thorough with the job description and its requirements to draft out a compelling resume that lands the job.
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