5 Tips for Writing a Great Resume
Writing a resume is never an easy task to begin or restart no matter where you are in your career journey. In the process of trying to figure it out, you might be asking yourself a variety of questions: “what should be included; how far back do I put my employment history; what specific skills should I include?” and the list of questions goes on for forever. Even if you were able to learn how to write one in high school or college, the act of building your professional resume for your career can be tricky when you are trying to make sure you can land the next great job opportunity. Well, if you are looking to land that great job, we can help you do just that! Our expert recruiters can help you go through your resume and help you build it to perfection! You can create an account on our website to get started.
Here are five tips for writing a great resume, no matter what career field you are in!
Look for specific keywords in job posts
Carefully read job listings that catch your eye. Keep track of similar words that appear in the different listings. This will help you identify keywords for those types of positions that show what the employer is looking for in their ideal candidate. You can utilize these keywords in your resume, when relevant, to catch the attention of the hiring manager reading your resume or the computer program scanning it. Keywords will not be the same for every job listing, even if they are within the same field or even a similar position, so you will have to modify your resume according to the keywords in the different listings. Be sure to pay close attention to the sections in job listings labeled “Requirements” and/or “Qualifications.” These sections are the perfect place to find the necessary keywords for the job listing to use within your resume to make it even better!
Highlight your achievements well
In your resume, it is important that you spend less time describing the job itself and more time describing your results, specifically your achievements from it. Potential employers want to know about the achievements you have had in the past within your work so that they know they can count on you to do the same, if not better, in the position they are considering you for. Depending on where you are within your career path, describing a previous job and your tasks within that job is unnecessary unless it provided you with a new, substantial skill to help you go beyond within the job you are applying for.
Put your “bests” on the top third of the page
Be sure when organizing and formatting your resume that your best experiences and accomplishments within your career are on the top third of the page. Hiring managers are looking to have their attention grabbed early on when reading a resume so that they know that they will not waste their time reading the rest of it. When you put your “bests” at the top of the page, you are increasing your chances of a hiring manager seeing and liking what you have done and what you might be able to accomplish. Put the most relevant and valuable information in this section, and utilize those keywords, so that you can increase your odds of getting your next great job opportunity.
Use active and concise language
Whether it is by a computer bot or by a hiring manager, resumes are skimmed quickly due to the copious amounts of resumes to review for every job listing. Writing your resume with short phrases is a great way to ensure you can get the necessary information included but still get to the point quickly. Using active and extraneous power words are a great way to catch the attention of your audience. Power words are words to tell your audience of what you have done within your career journey, such as achieved, earned, completed, etc. Maintain about 5-6 bullet points per section of your resume, as more than that are ignored anyway. Avoid using empty words and phrases that are just space fillers and are not relevant to you and the job listing.
Only include necessary subheadings and sections
When writing your resume, you want to be sure to only include information that is crucial to showing who you are as an employee and what you can do within the position you are applying for. There is no reason to include both a resume summary and a resume objective as they are similar enough to one another that including both is a waste of space. Only include personality traits and interests that are relevant to the position, otherwise, you are taking up space for other necessary information. Provide your relevant skills to the position and skip the expected skills such as email, Microsoft word, etc. These expected skills are exactly that, expected because they are skills that everyone in our technological world should have an idea and general knowledge about.
For more information on how to improve your resume, connect with one of our expert recruiters and get started with building and reviewing your resume!
