I love helping my friends and clients brag about themselves and make themselves look GREAT on paper. I love it even more when they get called back for an interview and improve their lives with a new job! I see a lot of mistakes when reviewing resumes. My friend recently shared with me a cartoon of someone saying ” My resume is basically a list of things I hate to do.” Is this how you feel too?
If so, you are going to love this post. I am going to share with you the resume tips that I have given my friends and clients that have helped transform their resumes and get jobs immediately!
- Answer the question – So what? Can you show how you increased revenue by ? %? Anything with numbers looks great! Like cost savings or increased productivity. Did you increase job satisfaction of employees, new hire retention, customer satisfaction? Did you save the company thousands of dollars?
- No blank space allowed. Try to condense to one page if possible. Two only if you absolutely need to.
- Include bullets and make sure everything is neat and organized.
- Don’t put any acronyms or list anything that the average person won’t understand.
- Don’t just tell them boring information about what you do! Brag about yourself! What problems did you solve?! How awesome are you?!
- If something on your resume doesn’t fit the position you are applying to, delete it.
- Show how creative you are and why the company should hire you. A resume and cover letter for the type of job you want doesn’t have to be boring. Pretend you were hiring yourself. What type of resume would you want to look at?
- On your resume and cover letter, use the words that are in the job description so it looks like you were MADE for the job!
- On your cover letter, try listing the job requirements on one side and on the other side how you meet the requirements. Then, all the information they are looking for is right there and they won’t have to search through your resume to find it.
- Most importantly, your resume should NOT be a list of things you hate to do. Why? Because you are applying to a job that you want and will love. So, try to make your resume as many of the requirements of the new job as possible. If you want a marketing job but have only have been doing accounting work (and hate it), don’t list it over and over again on your resume! Instead list all of your volunteer or personal activities where you can demonstrate the marketing competencies. Or think about how you do marketing in your accounting job. You might realize that even though you think you only do accounting, you actually do a lot to get people in the door by building referrals and increasing sales.
Even if you are satisfied with your current role, you should always have a copy of your most current resume handy. All of these tips also apply to your Linkedin profile. You should also be keeping your Linkedin profile as up to date as possible all the time! You never know who might be looking at it!
What shape is your resume in?
**This post was brought to you in association with HR jobs at Gumtree.