Your resume is the greatest tool you have at your disposal when looking for a new job. It’s a reflection of your abilities, past experiences, and aspirations for the future. With it being such an an important factor in your job search, it’s important to make sure it is the best it can be. In today’s digital-centric world, it can be hard to figure out how to most effectively structure your resume. The following tips should help you build a resume that not only wows your interviewer, but will maximize your exposure in online applications.
Include Relevant Experience
Whether you’re putting your resume together for the first time, or you’re looking to spruce yours up for an upcoming interview, one of the most crucial things to make sure you do is include relevant experience for the position you’re applying for. If you’re applying for a position that requires good people skills or experience with certain machines or applications, make sure your resume highlights your experience and qualifications in these different job requirements. Your resume is the best tool you have for showing a recruiter why you are the best fit for a position, so it needs to clearly list your qualifications for the position.
Use Keywords
We live in a digital age, and as a result, its more than likely that your resume will pass through a companies candidate screening system; especially if you are applying online. These systems are designed to scan resumes for keywords relevant to the position and to separate resumes from the sea of applications and put them in front of the right recruiters. Recruiters themselves also review your resume for these keywords in order to find the candidates with the most relevant experience to bring in for interviews. Make sure, before you send in your resume with your application, that you read over the job description for the position and edit your resume to include any keywords that you see as requirements for the position, or any phrases or terms that are repeated throughout the job description.
Quality Over Quantity
Many people start creating a resume and often find it difficult to stop listing skills and experience, and as a result they end up writing out their entire professional lives over the span of several pages. While this may be a good starting point, you will want to whittle this down and hone in on those positions that really exemplify your skills or that are relevant to the position you are applying for. As a general rule, you only want to go back about 15 years at the most when it comes to listing previous positions, and you want to try to keep your resume as close to one page as you can. Across all industries, recruiters only spend about 6 seconds on average reviewing any one resume so you want to make sure they can see as much of your skills during that time.
Spell Check
Nothing can ruin a resume faster than spelling and grammatical errors! Your resume is a reflection of yourself, and is often the first interaction a recruiter will have with you. As such, you want to make sure that all the language within is professional, flows naturally, and is correctly spelled and grammatically sound. While some people may struggle with this aspect of resume building, there are programs and software that can scan through documents to check for multiple types of errors. Its a good idea to double and triple check your resume, and either have someone else look it over or run it through a spell check program, before submitting it for your interview.
Clearly Labeled
As stated earlier, recruiters only spend about 6 seconds on average reviewing a resume, so you want to make sure they can find all the information they need quickly and easily. The best way to do this is to clearly label and organize your resume. Include headings and bullet points that define and separate the different sections of your resume so that it the most of its 6 seconds. Make sure your headings are distinct and easily identifiable; the easiest way to ensure this is to either write them in bold text or larger font then the content of their section. Make sure you also have good line spacing to ensure that your resume is evenly and cleanly distributed throughout.