7 Resume Tips
In a competitive employment market, standing out from the crowd is challenging. When a hiring manager gets flooded with hundreds of resumes, the chances of being selected for the interview are very slim. Below are seven helpful tips on how to improve your resume so it grabs attention and gets you the interview:
1. Target Your Resume
Targeting the resume to the job you seek is the key to getting the interview. In order to target the resume appropriately, you should go through each requirement and show explicitly that you are qualified and have experience to do the job.
2. Use a Summary of Qualifications
This is an ideal way to get noticed – fast. The Summary of Qualifications illustrates your top skills in an efficient manner, making the hiring manager’s job easier. A good Summary of Qualifications is tailored to contain the key words that you know the employer is searching for.
3. Be Results Specific
The hiring manager wants to see how you can contribute to their organization. By stressing previous experience and following it up with the results of the actions taken, you will demonstrate how your skills have lead to accomplishments that have benefited other employers.
4. Be Visually Appealing
A resume that is poorly formatted is extremely hard to read, a person reviewing it will just toss it aside. When working on your resume, consider using boldface, italics, bulleting and indentation to emphasize important points. Restrain from the use of capitals and underlining, as these increase the difficulty of reading the text.
5. Be Concise
Employers scan the resume in less than a minute, so concise resumes, not necessary short ones work best. Plentiful work experience is great, however deleting the portions of the resume that are not relevant for the position, creates a stronger impact on the employers.
6. Use Action Verbs
To make sentences powerful, use action verbs like: launched, developed, initiated.
7. Include a Cover-Letter
A cover-letter provides the opportunity of an extra touch point between you and the hiring manager. A good cover-letter explains how you have heard about the position, outlines the position-specific qualities that distinguish you from other candidates, and gives a sense of your personality, communication skills, and fit to the company.