Taking the effort to write your resume with the reader in mind is important to boost your chances of landing a much-needed job. Refer to these four tips to put together a compelling resume that catches the eye of a recruiter.
1. Organize your resume for easy reading. Busy recruiters may only glance over your resume if they're facing a stack of 50, 100 or even more resumes for the same position. Highlighting your strong points in bold fonts that are spaced in a logical manner is a must to draw the eye of the recruiter.
Bulleted lists are perfect for a resume that may only be briefly glanced at before being sorted into a pile. Use these lists for academic background, experience and skills, and keep your entire resume on one page if possible.
2. Avoid using a unique look simply for the sake of being different. There are plenty of stories about how a person used a unique resume idea to land a job, but very few people have actually found work by employing this method. Unique resumes are also industry-specific. For example, a graphic artist will probably want a colorful resume in a personally-designed layout, but the purpose of this design is to show off graphic design skills.
Unless you are in a field related to art or design, stick with an easily-readable font in black on a white background. Always print a test copy to ensure your font shows up well on the paper.
3. Go beyond spelling, grammar and punctuation when proofreading. You certainly don't want to submit a resume that is full of typos and grammatical errors, but there are other words and phrases which should be avoided on your resume. Cliche words that recruiters see candidates use time and time again can cost you the job.
Head over to the Huffington Post to learn more about which words you should avoid. These are common resume words and phrases, so there's a good chance that you have at least one of these offenders on your resume.
GetInterviews.com allows visitors to upload their resume for a free evaluation. Submit your resume to learn how you can change the wording to make yourself more appealing to employers.
4. Create more than one version of your resume. Even though you may be looking for similar jobs with different employers, you need to customize each resume to the specific job and employer. Establishing a resume that is easy to adapt for the situation is the best way to get over this hurdle.
Review your professional skills to highlight certain skills that are relevant to the open position. You could list out all of your skills and keep details of each of these skills handy on a computer in order to switch out the applicable experience.
Whether you're struggling with unemployment or just considering a change of career, GetInterviews can help you put together a resume that stands out from the rest.