Why and how you should tailor your executive resume

One thing that many job seekers don’t realize is that tailoring their executive resume for a particular job is essential. While you may think that you can apply for more job openings with a generic resume, the chances of you getting noticed by hiring managers who receive hundreds of tailored resumes are pretty low. If you want to make a splash in the pool of candidates, you must tailor your executive resume.

You should show employers that you are the best fit

Employers are not willing to hire just anyone for an executive role. They want to hire the candidate that they feel is the best fit for the job. If your executive resume is a one-size-fits-all generic document, you will have trouble convincing a potential employer that you are the best person for the position. If you apply for a job with an executive resume that is tailored for the position and highlights your biggest selling points, you will create an excellent first impression with the hiring manager.

First, you should research the company

Before editing your existing resume to fit the needs of an employer, you should do adequate research on the company. Use the company website, social media pages, and LinkedIn pages to identify the values of the organization. Learn about the vision and mission of the employer and identify the nature of the company culture. This will help you create a better executive resume that is tailored to suit the exact needs of the employer.

Then, you need to grab the job description

When you are tailoring your executive resume for a specific job, you should always have the job description at hand. First, go through the job description and identify the keywords. These will be things such as hard skills, soft skills, certifications, licenses, years of experience, knowledge areas, and certain experiences. When writing your executive resume, you need to use these keywords to describe your experience and qualifications.

Next, create the right resume sections

The most important sections for a resume are contact information, summary, work experience, education, and skills. However, you will need to include additional information in your resume to stand out from the crowd. These can be things like certifications you have earned, volunteer experiences related to the role, interests that align with the scope of the job, or similar projects you have completed previously. Create additional resume sections such as publications, volunteer work, projects, languages, patents, licenses, achievements, certifications, awards, etc. for your executive resume. Ensure that each piece of information that goes on your resume is relevant to the job.

Then, optimize your resume with keywords

Once you have entered your experiences and qualifications on the resume, it is time to optimize the document with keywords. Read the resume carefully and spot the instances where you can use the keywords you spotted earlier to describe your experiences. Ensure that each section of your resume carries a sufficient number of keywords.

Finally, you must create a targeted summary

Once all the sections of your executive resume have been filled in, you can start creating your summary statement. Ensure that your resume summary mentions your biggest selling points. A few related skills, professional achievements, and other qualifications must be featured on your resume summary. Also, highlight the value you bring to the company when writing your resume summary.