Want to Land a Job This Year? Read Our Best-Kept Resume Secrets

Every resume can be turned into a winning resume when you invest time and effort into perfecting it. Today, we are going to discuss many things you can do to get your resume seen by the right people.

Let’s start off with some of the most basic things about creating a resume that you should know about. These tips will help your resume shine among a sea of others.

Keep the ATS in mind when you create your resume

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) are prevalent everywhere in the job market. Many mid and large-scale employers use ATSs to sort candidate information and make their hiring process easier. When you are applying for a job with a new resume, the first thing you must do is to ensure that it is ATS-friendly. Here are a few things you can do to achieve that:

• Remove graphics, images, tables, multiple columns, and graphs from your resume
• Use an ATS-friendly resume template or create one from scratch
• Incorporate white space into your resume
• Optimize your resume with the right keywords from the job description
• Choose professional fonts and avoid fancy fonts

Don’t cram everything into your resume

Your resume is not a shortened version of your personal journal. We have seen many job seekers fail because they include everything but the kitchen sink in their resumes. Think of your resume as the ultimate marketing tool that sells your skills to the right employer. Then, it is mandatory for you to display only what is necessary for the employer to know about you.

Display the important stuff prominently

Many hiring managers would give your resume only about six seconds before they decide whether to reject you. You must ensure that the most important pieces of information catch their eye within that short time. Therefore, it is a smart idea to display the best skills, qualifications, and experiences within the top half of your resume.

Create a master resume template to make things easy

There is nothing that helps you create a winning resume in a short time than having a master resume template. Your master resume is a comprehensive account of your entire career. It is a lengthy version of your resume with the same design and formatting choices as your tailored resume. But it contains all your past jobs, skills, and qualifications. When it is time to create a tailored resume, you can just edit out parts of your master resume to customize it to the job.

Make it interactive by including links

Modern resumes are shared electronically the majority of the time. This allows you to do many things that a paper resume would not. One such thing is including links in your resume. One of the best places to display important links on your resume is within the contact information section. These links should be used to direct hiring managers to places where they can view your qualifications, samples of work, etc. Here are some links that you can add to your resume:

• A link to your LinkedIn profile
• Links to your social media with relevant content
• A link to your website/blog
• A link to your digital portfolio

Choose a good resume format for your situation

There are three different resume formats as the traditional chronological resume format, functional resume format, and the combination resume format. Each resume format caters to a different demographic of job seekers. When you select your resume format, be mindful of your career history and your career goals. Choosing the right resume format will help you overcome many hurdles during the hiring process.

Ditch the objective and go for a summary

Does your resume still have an objective statement on top? Then, you are sending out the signal that your resume is outdated. When creating a modern resume, we advise you to replace your objective statement with a resume summary statement. Unlike the objective, a summary adds value to your resume.

Enhance the work experience section

The work experience section is the most important section of your resume. This is the place where a hiring manager will spend the majority of their time on your resume. You need to ensure that they see the best bits about your career through the work experience section. So, how can you write a compelling work experience section?

• For each job entry, mention the job title, company name, location, relevant years, and achievements
• Describe your job in relation to your professional achievements within the role
• Quantify professional achievements using numbers and metrics
• Describe your jobs using 3-6 bullet points
• Use action verbs to start bullet points
• Employ adjectives to make the narrations more compelling

Keep your resume as short as possible

But you don’t have to take away important information to do so. Using clear, concise language, and making smart formatting choices will help you keep your resume short and interesting. There is no such thing as the one-page resume rule. If you believe that your skills and qualifications must be seen by an employer when making the hiring decision, you can take your resume up to two or three pages. However, you should try to minimize the length by removing unnecessary information and adjusting the formatting.

Use the right formatting to improve readability

One of the best features of a winning resume is improved readability and ease of navigation. The right formatting choices can help you achieve both of these resume goals. Here are a few things you can use to make your resume more readable while staying ATS-friendly:

• Bullets
• Different alignments
• White space
• Larger font sizes for headings
• Bold text
• Colors

Avoid resume design elements that the bots can’t read

Now that you know which resume design elements you should use, let’s talk a little bit about the ones that you shouldn’t. These resume design elements will affect the ATS compatibility of your resume and make it harder for an ATS to read your resume properly:

• TablesFancy fonts
• Logos
• Images
• Icons
• Text boxes
• Graphics
• Headers and footers

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