Are you struggling with what to keep in your resume?

Are you struggling with what to keep in your resume ?

Hello, fellow job hunters! 

Is your resume too fat to fly?

Constructing a compelling resume involves considering what you want to highlight. A resume should be tailored to the needs of the company you are applying to, and the niche you have expertise in. The information you include in the resume needs to be specific, and carefully curated to ensure it paints a clear picture of what you offer the team you will be a part of. But this involves leaving a lot of details on the cutting room floor. 

You can not simply fill your resume with all your skills and experience and call it done. A good is short, and streamlined. Approximately one page long is the ideal. This requires you to pick and choose what to keep, and what to leave out. So to that end, here are some things to consider when attempting to streamline your resume. 

Career objectives

Your career goals need to be apparent when you create a resume. This involves highlighting the skills and experience that will be most relevant to the application. Undoubtedly, some of your talents and experience will be outside the scope of the role you are aiming for. Leaving out superfluous information will not only strengthen your resume but also make it easier to read and clearly understand your career goals. 

Descriptive Words

You must learn to do more with less. Long and complicated descriptive words are unnecessary as your resume will pass through an ATS for screening purposes. An ATS only recognizes standard keywords, and complicated descriptions will hamper your chances. Even if an ATS has no trouble with your resume, it still needs to be sleek and easy to understand at a glance for the recruiters behind the machine. Recruiters only spend 6 or so seconds reading a resume, so make sure you are concise and precise. 

Long Lists

Bullet points and single-phrase explanations are good, but too much of a good thing is bad. Long bullet point lists quickly become confusing and hard to read, making it difficult for the recruiter to quickly grasp your skills and talents. Make sure your resume only highlights the skills that you are going to apply in the niche you aim to apply for. Mentioning experience that is not applicable to your current aspiration is not only a waste of the recruiter’s time, but also of yours. 

Industry Specific Terms

Using industry-specific jargon is a tempting proposition when trying to fit a lot of information into one small page. But consider the field you are aiming for. If you have changed sectors, or positions within a field, the jargon you might use will be impossible for the recruiter to know beforehand. Instead, if you aim to change your career path, focus on general skills and use simple language to ensure readability and promote your strengths without complicated buzzwords from your former field. 

High School Details or GPA

As a fresher, it is sensible to mention your educational qualifications, high school or college grades and so on. But as an industry professional, your work experience is far more important and extensive than any educational grade. Remember to update your resume, and keep in mind that your industry experience speaks much louder than long-ago education. Do not waste precious space mentioning your grades, when it could be used to further highlight your industry skills and expertise. 

Outdated Work Experience

Much like educational qualifications, sometimes industry experience also goes out of date. The business landscape is always in flux and now more than ever, technological disruptions are more common than ever. Ensure that every time you update your resume, you remove the outdated and irrelevant work experiences that might hold you back from including your most recent qualifications. As a rule of thumb, experience more than 10 years old, is considered outdated, and should be removed. 

References

As a part of an industry, you will have no-doubt interacted and gained experience in multiple workplaces where different aspects of your skills were allowed to shine. Ensure that your resume has a references section where your new employer can connect with former workplaces so they can be wowed by your track record. But, keep in mind that as before, sometimes references become outdated as well. Workplaces that are no longer active, or references who are no longer part of the field are not going to impress anyone, and it is important to continuously refresh your references to include your most recent work. 

Now you will be prepared to reconstruct your resume from the ground up and trim the unnecessary and outdated fat that may have filled up your resume and prevented it from showing off your talents as it should. 

But keeping track of what to say or what not to say can be a tiring process, and there are many factors to consider. Don't worry however! ACE Resumes can give you a step up where you need it. Connect with us and let us trim down your resume into a sleek and impressive self-advertisement. 

Best Regards, 

Apoorva Choudhary, founder 

Ace Resumes