Each job opening at any site leads to thousands of resumes sent to the future employer. Imagine having to look through them over and over hoping to find a perfect candidate, making several appointments daily to invite possible candidates, spending hours interviewing them and then – choosing a right person for the job.
If you try to put yourself in their shoes, you will see how hard it is sometimes to see how good a person will be at your job. Sometimes, people are not selected simply because their resumes did not stand out at all.
In order not to be lost in piles of resumes the company receives, we suggest you pump up your resume just a bit to make it look a bit better.
There are several simple tricks that might help you create a better looking resume.
1. Adapt the resume
If you are not willing to spend some time adjusting your resume to the job you want to get, why should your future employer spend time hoping you would be perfect? The best way to update your resume would be to write a short summary in the first paragraph describing why would you be perfect for the job and highlighting most important points.
The other way to do this is to delete all the irrelevant experience from this version of your resume and attach an extra copy of a complete one.
2. Avoid cliché words
If you find yourself repeating words and expressions like ‘responsible’, ‘developed’, ‘successfully’ more often than you should have, than maybe it is time for you to use some synonyms instead at sites like thesaurus.com and many others.
3. Your resume should be easy-to-read
Write your resume in reverse chronology – placing the latest experience at the top to make it more visible. Make sure you do not write to much about each job and use bullets as often as you can to make it easy to look through. Your resume should not be over two pages long.
4. Achievements
Try to show your achievements whenever possible. Use numbers to show how much progress you got and how big the team was that you were in charge of.
5. Use keywords in your resume
When you read an article or a job opening you most often scan through it to see for most important points. The same happens with your resume – the employer scans through it to see whether there is anything that might be good for the job.
To make sure they see the most important things use keywords that are applicable to the job you are applying to.