Guide To Improve Your Resume

Dec 7, 2020 | Career Advice, Employment Training, Support Knowledge Base, Veterans Education & Training

Employers use resumes throughout the hiring process to learn more about applicants and decide if their a good fit. Your resume should be easy to read, summarize your accomplishments and skills, and highlight relevant experience.

Working professionals, recent graduates, and current students should all brush up their resumes regularly. Taking inventory of what you’ve achieved each month and adding it to your resume is a great practice to incorporate especially if you’d like to land the job of your dreams.

If you want to improve your resume and stand out in a crowd, keep reading.

Guide to improve your resume

Identify Keywords

Your resume should be written with keywords for each job post in mind. Since most resumes are submitted online, digital filters identify resumes with the matching keywords from the job post. Then, hiring managers look through those resumes and choose who they want to bring in for an interview.

For example, if a job post says the company is looking for an “expert in Adobe Photoshop”, then you want to make sure you have the keywords of “Adobe”, “Photoshop”, and “expert” clearly listed on your resume. Not including the proper keywords can result in your resume not even being seen by hiring managers.

This means that you may need to tailor your resume for each job you apply to. To save yourself time and energy, you can create a “master” resume and swap out keywords to match the job post you are currently applying to.

Adjusting your resume slightly to match the specific job posting you are targeting can go a long way. Subtle changes in the keywords used, especially when they better align with the text of the job post itself, can improve your resume and help you land an interview.

Determine Your Resume Design

Your resume design should be well organized and easy to read. Alignment is key to your resume design. Hiring managers look at a large number of resumes for each job post, so you don’t want to make it any harder for them to identify if you are the right candidate for the job.

Improve your resume by including only your top-level skills in each job experience. Just enough to entice a hiring manager to call you for an interview. Then, you can can dive into more details and show off your personality.

Add Action Verbs

A pro tip for all resumes is using “action” verbs first when describing your job experiences. At the beginning of every line of each recent job, describe the function you performed at each relevant job using words like “managed”, “led”, “controlled”, and “organized”. Hiring staff will often read that first word to understand what you did and wait for the interview to discuss specifics. You can find helpful lists of action words like this one online.

Limit the Length

Last, do all you can to keep the length of your resume to one page without leaving out key information. Hiring managers don’t spend a lot of time reading each resume so it’s important to highlight the most relevant experiences to the job you are applying now. Take out any other fluff content that is taking up space on the resume, and be as concise as possible in your wording. If your resume includes old or irrelevant information, such as jobs held over 10 years ago or minor degrees and achievements, it may be time to take that info off. A simple way to improve your resume is to shorten it to an appropriate length.

Summary

Adjust each resume to match keywords in the specific job posting you are applying to.
Make your resume look clean and simple. Readability is important.
Use action verbs such as “managed”, “led”, “implemented”, etc.
Limit your resume to one page.

With persistence and attention to detail on your resume, you will see real results in your job search. Interested in improving your resume? Contact us to hear about resume review options today.

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