Your resume is a summary of your talents, credentials, and experience. An employer’s initial impression of you will be based on the information presented in your resume, so it’s important that it accurately represents who you are as a professional. There are many methods to improve your resume, but following these five tips can help your resume stand out compared to your competition.
1. Tailor your resume specifically to the position you’re looking for.
Include a resume written specifically for the position you are applying for with every application you send in. What this involves is emphasizing the expertise and skills that are most highly relevant to the position. Putting in the effort to do so will ensure that your resume stands out from the competition by demonstrating to potential employers how well you understand the requirements of the position.
2. You should highlight your achievements.
When outlining your previous roles and responsibilities, provide quantitative data since prospective employers are interested in learning the value you can offer their company. For instance, if you were a team leader in your prior position, you should include the size of your team and any accolades or honors they earned while working under your direction.
3. Keep your resume brief but thorough.
If you can, keep your resume to one to two pages in length when you write it out; however, don’t compromise on the substance to meet this goal! Maintain brevity by limiting yourself to describing just those experiences directly relevant to the position you seek and excluding any words or phrases that aren’t required. Ideally, you’ll be able to highlight your relevant professional experience without overwhelming potential employers with information.
4. List only relevant work experience.
Including every job you’ve ever had could seem like a smart idea, but it might backfire if prospective employers see a large list of jobs with no noticeable pattern other than employment. Instead, you should concentrate on mentioning just those experiences most relevant to each job you are applying for, making sure not to exclude any key facts linked to those positions.
5. Seek a second opinion.
Having a second pair of eyes review your resume before you send it out is a great method to catch any last-minute errors or omissions, both in terms of the content itself and the presentation of that material (e.g., font size/typeface selections). Having a second pair of eyes might help us see errors we might have missed during our first review. This is because we have such a deep understanding of our work that we may be blind to how it would appear to someone who doesn’t know as much about it as we do.
Nowadays, it’s more important than ever to have a Resume that stands out from the crowd when searching for work. If you want to make sure that your resume stands out from the competition, use these helpful tips to improve the overall quality of your resume.