It’s February and romance is in the air; it’s also a very busy time of the year for job seeking. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could fall in love with your resume this month? Here are some quick tips to get your resume in shape so it can start wooing employers!
Law of Attraction
What sort of things are employers looking for when they look through their candidate databases (often known as Applicant Tracking Systems or ATS for short)? One of the things they use to search for candidates is keywords related to the role, industry, credentials, or skills necessary to complete the job. How do you ensure you have the right keywords and in the right amount?
- Stay achievement focused by sharing the details of your actions and also relate the results, goals, or outcomes of each activity whenever possible. Details will help draw out the necessary keywords.
- Look through job postings in your field and pick out the most commonly used phrases and requirements that match your experience and be sure to use them in your resume.
- Create an opening snapshot at the top of your resume; it can consist of two or three areas. Common sections include:
- Summary or Profile: Tell employers at a high level, who you are, what you have done and what you bring to the table.
- Highlighted Skills: Feature your most valuable skills. This will allow employers to quickly see that you have the necessary skills in your background, which will entice them to read the resume further.
- Featured Accomplishments: Show off achievements from past work experience that you feel directly relate to your target role and highlight the type of results you can create for your next employer.
Swipe Right – or – If You Love Them, Set Them Free
No matter which phrase you identify with more, chances are there are some things you need to clear out of your resume in order to get it in its best shape. Here are some things you can easily remove:
- Articles such as “a”, “an”, and “the”: Your resume can drag on forever with these extra, unnecessary words. An occasional proper noun will require use of the word “the”, but try to limit articles to these minimal situations.
- First person, or personal pronouns: Eliminate the use of “I”, “me”, and “my” throughout your resume. Keep in mind, the entire document is about you, so it is not necessary to mention “I” to identify who is doing the action you are describing. Although there are trends that suggest using first-person in a resume, this is still not the norm and a difficult thing for most people to do without sounding very repetitive.
- “References Upon Request”: This is a given. There’s no reason to include it.
- Do the dates give you away? To avoid opening up to age discrimination (in either direction), you might wish to leave the dates off of some items such as your education and only go back 10-15 years in your work experience. If you feel you’ll be missing out on key skills or abilities you can always add them back into the beginning of your resume in the “snapshot” section.
- Jargon: If you are changing fields or transitioning from military to civilian life, be sure to scan your resume for words and acronyms that might not be widely known. Even if you aren’t making a big change, some companies use terminology that isn’t shared throughout their industry.
- Additional Sections: Don’t get bogged down in additional sections if they don’t directly provide information about your culture fit, skills fit, or motivational fit. If your volunteer activities or hobbies don’t offer strong transferable skills or help answer the question “why do you want to work for us?”, consider leaving them out.
Accentuate the Positive
Check the tone of your resume overall. Are you highlighting the upside of your strengths and are you using words with positive connotations?
- Choose your words carefully. Consider the phrase “first to find problems” and compare it to “first to provide solutions”. Both options say close to the same thing but one forces you to think about having problems (negative connotation) and the other brings to mind positive feelings (solution). Consider words throughout your resume that may be replaced with words creating a more optimistic, inviting tone.
- What are your strengths? Do an inventory of your skills and experience and be sure to emphasize your core or key strengths, those skills you rely on most to be effective at your job. Self-assessment can be difficult, so you may want to take an aptitude test or personality quiz to figure out which ones are the most dominant for you.
- Consistent Formatting: The best thing you can do in a resume to make it appear clean and organized is to be consistent with your formatting choices. The biggest problem areas can be: periods at the end of bullet points, spacing around dashes, dates, abbreviations, bullet point and font sizes. Whatever you choose for each of these areas, make sure to use it every time so your resume will look more professional.
An Attitude of Gratitude
When writing your resume, respect the time and attention you get from a recruiter by cultivating a gratitude mindset.
- Thank them for their consideration in your cover letter and follow-up with a thank you note (either by mail or email, depending on the hiring timetable). Let an employer know that you appreciate their efforts, their time, and their consideration.
- Respect their time by keeping your resume brief and to-the-point. Keep fluff and filler out of your resume. To do this, use specifics, descriptive language and when at all possible, numbers and metrics to help tell the story.
Bonus: No time to complete all of these changes right now? No worries. You can make incremental changes by focusing on one or two areas each time you look at your resume or go to update it. Even using just a few of these tips will help make your resume more professional and stand out from the rest.