Tailor Your Resume for Success!

The average time a recruiter takes to look at your resume is only 6 seconds! So how do you make your resume stand out? You can outbeat the average and grab a prescreeners reviewing time if you tailor your resume and pay close attention to how you develop your resume. Now tailoring your resume according to a new job description can be tedious, however studies have shown if you alter your resume based on the employers job description you are most likely land an opportunity in the interviewing stage. Out of the hundreds of applicants how do you make your resume stand out?

What you need to realize is that a resume is always going be a working document, no matter how much experience, seniority or established in a particular profession you may be in. Whether you are a professional or a student; a resume is a lifelong document that will always remain in an edit mode! As you will be always gaining new skills, experiences, upgrading your education, taking new courses, obtaining certifications, getting promoted, switching jobs, and changing careers the resume will always remain under the construction mode. As you continue to grow in your professional life it is important to continously keep track of your new skills, whether that is learning a new software system at work, or learning how to multitask and time manage. All of your skills will come into play in how you showcase your resume and make a set ground for a paritcular objective in your resume.

Tailoring your resume for every new role you apply to, is very important, using the same resume for each job will not benefit you or the recruiters. Remember you want to stand out. You must read the job description and incorporate the relevant language within your resume alongside with your experience level. The recruiter will notice if you have indeed read the job description and applied it to your resume. The impression of putting in the effort to fully making your resume relatable to the position will make a big difference. Recruiters already get a lot of underqualified and recycled resumes, they do not need another one. Keep in mind that, recruiters receive resumes in counts of hundreds and most of them do not even get to their inbox especially if the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is filtering out the resumes based on the specific keywords, as the software is looking out for job specifications.

Here are some tips on how to tailor your resume for success!

1. Headline and Presentation - Make your resume presentable! The headline of your resume should contain your name bolded and should be a couple of fonts larger than the rest of the content. In the contact information, ensure to give your best email address and contact number so that you can be easily be accessible to the recruiter. Headhunters and recruiters need to have a proper form of communication incase they find you to be the right pontential for their role. Keep your resume simple and clean. The content of your resume is more important than the creativity of your resume, overly adding colour or graphics can be distracting for the person reviewing your resume.
2. Formatting and Consistency - Under each role, start off with professional titles, company names, and locations. Be very consistent with the timeline of work at every position. That being said, maintain the same font style, font size, title formatting for every new role, and margins must stay aligned. Recruiters will appreciate the consistency of maintaining the accuracy so that they can get right to the point with your skills and qualifications.
3. Using Relevant Language - Using the proper verbiage in your resume is important. Based on your profession use the technical words associated with your work skills. Start each bullet point with a verb or an action orientated word, this will present that you have previously performed your tasks. Additionally, keep your present tense or past tense in your bullet points consistent; do not confuse the two, or else this will impact your resumes' presentation. Recruiters do look at your writting skills as well, such as using proper grammer and spellings; these little things can either make or break your opportunity. So do ensure to spell check and grammar check your resume, or ask someone to proof-read prior to submission of your resume. Moreso, use the keywords from the job descriptions so that your resume gets passed through the initial screening process based on your qualifications! For example, if you are a skilled trade specialist do add keywords that are comparable on the job description. It is important to display how your experience mimics the job description.
4. Tailoring the Resume - Tailor your resume based on what role your applying for, to help keep the recruiters attention span stay engaged. Ensure to cover the company's needs and what is most important to the organization based on what they are looking for in their best candidate. Highlight your skills and qualifications that match up with the job description. For example, if the job description has certain traits, such as if they are looking for someone who is detail orientated or organized; ensure to incorporate those skills into your resume while you provide proof of how how you gained those skills previously with work.
5. Roles and Responsibilities - In this section, ensure to match the content of the job description into your bullet points. Under your titles, or previous positions make sure to only have 4 to 6 bullet points, do not go over board with making your points lengthy. In the bullet points, add the most important tasks performed in your role with examples. For example, performed orientations and trained 14 new hires during a high peak season of recruitment in 5 days. Keep it descriptive, informative, yet short; you can elaborate and provide further indepth examples.
6. Objectives and Qualifications - This section should be aligned right below your headline. List the top selling soft skills, technical, and professional related transferable skills in this section. This section should contain the attention grabbing bullet points! Tailor your objectives and experience based on what the company is looking for, transfer all of your work, volunteer or educational experiences into action taking bullet points. For example, "demonstrated strong analytical and problemsolving skills by resolving past due billing issues for customers" would be a good line to use. Or for soft skills say somthing like, "Highly motivated individual with excellent time management skills, demonstrated by submitting reports on a timely basis for managers".
7. Provide Evidence - It is very important alongside with your with experience, to provide proof. For example in each bullet point provide how you have performed certain tasks that match the job description. Do not just list the duties, elaborate the end result or the outcome of that task. To make your resume is even more compelling, you can add numbers, percentages, dates, dollar amounts, geography and number of people or team sizes as well. You can also provide information about your knowledge about software systems, and your proficency levels. Additionally, always elaborate on your soft skills that you have developed, such as time management, communication, problem-solving etc.
8. Reordering the Resume - Reorder your resume based on what closley corresponds to the job you applied for, such as if your most recent job matches your experience from 1 year ago, elaborate more of that in your resume. Instead move that job title up to the top of your resume when reformatting, you can always reformat the date to most relevant work experience to least revelant work experience; even if it is not your most recent. This will make it easy for the recruiters to find your credentials aligned. Anything that does not resonate with the job description can be removed to help with the consistency of the resume and make it concise.
9. Achievements and Education - Depending on the career stage your starting at, your education and achievements can either be listed on the top of your resume or the ending of your resume. Ensure that if you are applying to a job that requires you to have a license, such as a industrail electrician 422A, to add that at the top of your resume after your objectives or headline to allow the recruiter to confirm your qualifications. If you are still a student, or recent graduate of less than 2 years it is highly reccomended that you list those details on top of your resume or prior to listing your job titles. If you are an intermediate experienced professional of 3 or plus years your education such as graduate degrees and certificates can be listed on the end of your resume. Now this section is a personal choice on how you want to accomodate your resume with your achievements. It is important to emphasize your education, and make sure that it does align with the position you are applying to as well. If you hold a good GPA standing make sure to list that as well, such as if your GPA score is 3.5; including the accredited university or college that you are attending or have gradudated from. Lastly, add any additional awards you may have gained as well.