Job hunting is a competitive sport, and your resume is the best way to stay ahead of other applicants. This article will teach you five valuable resume tips and strategies to stand out as an attractive candidate and land an interview.
Let’s begin!
Resume tips and strategies
The best resumes implement these helpful nifty tips.
- Tailor your resume.
- Quantify your achievements.
- Use action verbs.
- Use keywords strategically.
- Mind your resume’s format.
1. Tailor your resume
Personalizing your resume to a position is the best way to assure recruiters you’re in it for the long haul. Draw inspiration from these quick tips on how to tailor your resume.
Analyze the job description.
Every job description is a window into a recruiter’s mind. Identify the essential skills, qualifications, and responsibilities required of you.
Customize your summary.
Ensure your summary aligns with the skills and responsibilities you identified in the job description.
For example, if you’re applying for a project management role, emphasize your excellent track record in delivering projects on time and within budget.
Include relevant certifications
Certifications are vital for proving you’re qualified for a specific role. However, refrain from including every credential you receive in your lifetime. Only mention relevant ones and feature them prominently on your resume.
Tweak your work experience.
Modifying your experience entails highlighting specific relevant experiences over others. The best way to know what to emphasize is by analyzing the job description again.
For example, if a job description focuses on client relationship management, start your “work experiences” sections with instances where you generated leads and retained vital clients in your previous positions.
2. Quantify your achievements
Applying for jobs is all about proving you’re valuable to a company. What better way to do that than to show your impact in numbers?
Include percentages, amounts, timeframes, and other metrics you achieved in previous roles.
Remember to contextualize these figures by explaining the situation, your actions, and the result.
3. Use action verbs
The verbs you use to list your responsibilities influence recruiters’ perceptions of you. Action verbs are impactful words that command attention and demonstrate your skills concisely.
Excellent examples of these verbs include
- Led
- Managed
- Achieved
- Implemented
- Developed
Check out these action verbs to get you started.
4. Use keywords strategically
Recruiters often pass resumes through an applicant tracking system (ATS) to shortlist applicants. In 2023, Jobscan found that 97.4% of Fortune 500 companies used an ATS. A vital task of an ATS is to scan for keywords.
The best way to know the keywords to include is to look for action verbs and skills that are repeated throughout the job description. Additionally, stay updated on your industry’s key phrases.
Be mindful to use these words sparingly and naturally. ATS systems can flag excess keywords as spam and reject your resume. Human recruiters can also turn down your application if your resume feels like a collection of buzzwords.
5. Mind your resume’s format
Your resume’s format determines whether you stand out against a sea of applications. Here are some helpful tips to make the best first impression.
- Choose a clean layout with plenty of negative space.
- Use a standard legible font like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman. Use the font size 12 for the main content and 14 for headings.
- Use bulleted lists to make it easier to scan your resume.
- Use bold or italics sparingly to highlight vital points, such as certifications or relevant skills.
- Keep your resume concise. Including all your experience is tempting, but limit it to one page if you have less than ten years of experience.
- Save your resume as a PDF to ensure your format doesn’t change across word processors. Don’t worry, PDFs are ATS-friendly.
Remember to proofread your resume to catch any typos. Errors make you look unprofessional and indicate your lack of attention to detail. Consider letting a friend, colleague, or mentor review your resume and ask them for feedback.
Conclusion
Your resume informs recruiters whether they should take a chance on you. Make yours stand out by tailoring it to a specific job, highlighting your achievements, and including strategic keywords. Also, maintain a clean, professional format that grabs attention immediately.
With these resume tips and strategies, you will make a lasting impression and land your dream job.
