Customizing Your Resume for Each Job You Apply To?

Should I customize my resume for each job I apply to?

This is one of the most common questions I get asked as professional resume writer.

Whether you’ve hired a resume writing service before or are trying to identify the best resume writer for your needs, one of the biggest questions you may have is whether you will need a different resume for every job you apply for.

You’ve heard the advice over and over. Whether you’re looking for a job or just testing the market, there’s no better way to stand out from the crowd than with a customized resume that clearly encapsulates your personal brand.

And it’s totally true. In today’s competitive job market, having a customized resume is one of the best ways to land an interview.

So does that mean you’ll need a new resume for each job or company? One of the most common questions from jobseekers is exactly this!

But do I really need to customize my resume for every posting?

Short answer….yes, you do…most of the time!

But here’s the good news – you don’t need to rewrite it each time. Here are three tips to help you tailor your resume for different job descriptions so that you can maximize your resume writing investment.

A resume is more than just a list of skills and experience; it should clearly and concisely articulate your value in a way that speaks to the hiring manager. The best way to do this is to create “yes” moments throughout your resume that reinforce for a hiring manager how you are a great fit for the role they are hiring for.

So how do you do that without spinning your wheels and spending endless hours rewriting your resume?

Focus on Relevance

 Like most things in life, I apply the 80/20 rule. Focus your energy on areas with maximum impact. Remember, when writing your resume, you’re giving someone the highlight reel, not your biography!

So, instead of regurgitating the same information for each application, cull out the most relevant information based on the role you are targeting.

Target Your Headline

Updating your headline with the title you are targeting is a great way to quickly customize your resume. Bonus if you can cull top 3 relevant skills from the job description and use those as a subhead. For example, if you are a marketing leader targeting a VP role in product marketing for a financial services company and the scope of the role encompasses sales enablement strategy, competitive positioning, and customer acquisition, your headline could be:

VP of Product Marketing | Banking, Financial Services, FinTech

Sales Enablement Strategy – Competitive Positioning –  Lifecycle Customer Acquisition

Before landing on headline and subhead keywords, you will need to make sure you can back up your claims with quantified evidence in the resume body

Tailor Your Skills to the Job Description

Critically review the job description for key hard (job-related) and soft (experiential/EQ) skills for the role. Identify the ones you can speak to and create a master list.

Another great way to find skills to include in your skills section and throughout professional experience in your resume is using LinkedIn’s Build Resume feature.

Go to your LinkedIn profile page and navigate to the More option underneath your profile. Click Build Resume, then from your profile and enter the job title you are targeting. LinkedIn will provide you with the most relevant skills searched by recruiters for similar jobs.

When adding skills to your skills section, similar to adding keywords in your header, make sure that you can back up your claims! Quantify and add scope in professional experience to accelerate impact.

Once you have a list of key skills for the job and company you are targeting, look for opportunities to include these throughout your resume. In addition to the skills section, I love using leading keywords for each achievement bullet.

This is a great way to easily swap out keywords to customize your resume for different roles based on nuances and slightly variations in jobs.

Here’s an example. The below bullet currently has a lead keyword of Global Brand Relaunch, but this could easily be swapped out for Brand Storytelling, Brand Identity, or even Marketing Strategy based on the role and company needs.

• Global Brand Relaunch: Established global blueprint, recast under unified brand identity, and set clear international strategy with regional differentiation to streamline fragmented campaigns under cohesive narrative. Launched modern website and repositioned legacy content to cultivate top of funnel awareness of digital transformation capabilities.

Prioritize Order of Information to Customize Your Resume

Your resume is a dynamic document. When you work with a professional resume writer on creating your personal brand, the goal is to curate and collate your experience in a differentiated way that sets you apart, makes you memorable, and aligns with the specific job you are targeting.

One of the ways that this is done is through prioritization. When you review the job description you are targeting, similar to the way in which you have done to identify skills and areas of focus for headline above, take note of the repeated or most critical items.

These should come first on your resume, both in the highlight reel portion of your branding section, as well as in the skills and throughout your professional experience.

Reorder bullets, sections, and other features to place the most relevant information first. This ensures busy hiring managers and recruiters who are giving your resume a cursory 15-second scan can find the information they are looking for.

Prioritization can range from shifting order of highlights in your branding section to moving achievement bullets to the top of the list.

Where appropriate, you can also create focused experience sections to group relevant experience or bring earlier roles to the forefront.

If you’re struggling with updating your resume for different jobs, consider creating a master resume that includes all of your experience, then cull out irrelevant info for each role.

Use the KISS Method When Customizing Your Resume 

Job searching is stressful, I get it. After working with thousands of jobseekers and even navigating through my own career trials and tribulations, I believe the most important job search advice is to use common sense.

There are thousands of experts out there, some of whom have zero qualifications and are selling something, and many of whom have great advice. But the thing about advice is that it’s not one-size-fits-all.

It’s so important to synthesize all the advice you get with a lens of pragmatism. Keep it simple, stupid, when applied to resumes translates to using common sense.

Remember, the most important thing is to make sure it’s tailored to the job description and company you are applying for. You do not need to be an SEO expert to tailor your resume, nor do you need to reinvent the wheel every time you apply for a job. 

Final Thoughts About Resume Customization

A well-written, customized resume that showcases your skills and experience will set you apart from other candidates and give you a leg up on landing your dream job! It’s so important to remember that your resume is only a portion of your job search. I often use the wheel analogy to talk about job searching. If you think about your job search as a wheel, resumes and online job applications are one spoke. 

If you spend all your time focused on only online applications, you aren’t going to go anywhere! Just like a balanced diet keeps you healthy, a balanced job search will keep you gainfully employed and allow you to see traction. 

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