Writing your resume can be incredibly stressful, but it doesn’t have to be! Whether you decide to hire a professional resume writing service or go it alone, these three tips can improve the results dramatically.
1) Target your resume! There’s nothing worse than a one-size-fits-all resume. Recruiters will pass over it because it’s too general. A recruiter that reviews hundreds of resumes a week can quickly tell if you’re using the exact same resume to send to all kinds of jobs. Even if your interests are broad and you’re targeting multiple industries, your resume should still be specific to the job you’re applying to. Career objectives are out of favor in today’s resume, but I like to close the summary/profile section with a short statement of objective. This can be a great place to focus on an industry and can even by updated as you post to different industries.
2) Delete unnecessary info! If you’re applying to a job in Marketing and you volunteered at an animal shelter 20 years ago, this information may not need to be on your resume! Everything on your resume needs to help you towards your goal. You are painting a picture for the recruiter about how well you fit their needs. If something on your resume looks like it may be distracting or confusing, it probably will be. Use your headers to group important information together and consider placing old experience (more than fifteen years) under a Previous Experience header.
3) Use clear, concise language! A resume is no place to be flowery or verbose. While descriptive adjectives can certainly help you to make your point, you absolutely need to mean what you say and say what you mean in a resume. Someone who has never met you needs to understand exactly what you mean in each sentence. This is a daunting proposition and requires careful, focused energy and attention to each word. Be sure to use concrete examples to support each statement and remove any unnecessary language.