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Your job-hunting success depends a lot on how good your resume is. It’s easier to win over a prospective employer and get a good job if you have a solid resume. Your resume is the first point of contact with an employer. It gives them the first impression of you. A good resume means a good impression and an increased chance of landing the job, and vice versa. Therefore, your resume holds a lot of weight when landing a job. Little wonder job seekers look for the best career boost website and also pay professionals at resume services online to help them craft their resumes.
If you don’t have the money to pay a professional resume writer for a resume, you can create one yourself. However, there are certain tips and strategies that you should follow to create a professional resume. This article discusses some things to look out for when writing a resume to land your dream job.
- Focus more on the job you’re applying for than the past ones
Many companies now use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to sift through the numerous resumes they constantly receive. Only the best resumes get past the ATS, and they are the ones that a human reads. The best way to beat the ATS is to tailor the resume to the job you’re applying for. This means you must know the job description first, highlighting experiences, skills, and achievements relevant to the job description. So, if you’ve worked in sales and are now applying for a marketing position, your best bet is to highlight the relevant marketing skills you learned in your previous role rather than your sales skills and experience.
This doesn’t mean you’re changing your job title or work experience. You’re only focusing on the transferable or related marketing skills instead of your sales achievements alone.
- Highlight your achievements
Many people mistake highlighting their responsibilities in their past roles on their resumes. Flash News: Nobody cares! What recruiters and hiring managers want to see are your achievements. What did you achieve in that role? How did you help the company achieve its goal? What positive impact can you point to in your past role? If you could increase the company’s sales by 150% as a sales manager, highlight that achievement clearly on your resume. It makes you a more interesting prospect than stating your job duties/responsibilities.
- Use numbers to quantify your achievements.
When highlighting your achievements on your resume, ensure to use numbers. Numbers add more credibility to your accomplishment and track record than simply saying what you did. For instance, it’ll make more sense to the recruiter if you write your achievement as: “Improved company’s overall sales by 75% and profit margin by 35% in Q2, 2020,” instead of: “Improved company’s overall sales and profit margin.”
The former feels more relatable and credible, but the latter feels like what it is – just words. Your achievement sounds better when you quantify it with numbers. “Generated 10,000+ new leads every month for 5 consecutive months,” isn’t the same as “Generated new leads monthly.” That’s the power of numbers.
- Put your work experience before your education.
If you’ve not recently graduated from college, your education shouldn’t come before your work experience. It should be towards the end of your resume. Employers are more concerned about your work experience, achievements, and technical skills than your educational status. It doesn’t matter where you are schooled. It should take the back seat on your resume.
- Be simple and concise.
Recruiters only spend a few seconds skimming through a resume. They don’t have the luxury of time to go through each bit of your resume. So, you must make it simple and be as brief as possible. Write your resume in bullet points rather than blocks of text to make it more readable. Use simple language, and only include relevant information about the job you’re applying to. Adding irrelevant information to your resume and making it too wordy will not get you the job.
- Proofread before sending
This is an important point to note. Ensure that your resume is devoid of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. As little as it might be, it can deny you the job. So, it’s important to proofread your resume before sending it. If you can, give it to someone else to read through on your behalf and look for errors and mistakes you may have missed. Also, don’t send your resume in a rush. After writing it, take some time, a day or two, before returning to it. Then proofread it again before sending it. You don’t want all your hard work undone by a simple grammar error you could have avoided.
Conclusion
Your resume is an important part of your job-hunting process. You may not land your dream job if you don’t get it right. Thankfully, writing a resume isn’t as difficult as many imagine. Following the tips discussed in this article will help you write a strong resume.
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