Even if you’re not in the market for a new job, keeping your resume current ensures you don’t forget career milestones, newly acquired skills, important awards, or professional development courses/memberships. As you’re going through your resume, follow our 4 Resume Tips sure to grab the attention of the recruiter or hiring manager:
1. Stay Organized
Streamline your resume with a smooth, easy-to-read design with consistent spacing, style, font, and margins. Uniformly sprinkle bold or italicized style to highlight important sections, job titles, awards, and metrics. Use clear, concise sentence structures to quickly articulate your background. And, whatever you do, move away from Courier or Times New Roman font.
2. Make the Most of the Top Half
Immediately catch the attention of the recruiter or hiring manager, so include key pieces in the top half of your resume. This is the part of the resume where you need to promote your professional brand and what you bring to the job.
List your professional email address (get rid of the old AOL email address) and remove the objective portion of your resume. Instead, include a short key description of yourself (e.g. Plant Manager or Human Resources Assistant) and 2-3 summarized bullet points that address these questions:
- What industries do you have experience and knowledge in? What niche are you a specialist in?
- What are you known for in your job/career AND how has it helped your stakeholders (orgs/companies/clients/customers/staff,etc)? What achievements have you made?
- What examples of leadership and/or problem solving do you have AND how do you do it?
While addressing the main questions above, include a brief supporting point. Here’s an example of a Production Supervisor’s main summary points:
- Over 10 years of experience in widget manufacturing, advancing from skilled machine operator to Production Supervisor
- History of developing and implementing strategic initiatives to improve plant efficiency, reduce operational costs, and lead cross-functional teams to fulfill on-time production volume and ensure quality standards
- Trusted hands-on leader who mentors employees through on-the-job training, skill development opportunities, career growth plan, and willingness to step in to help
3. Note Your Key Skills & Achievements
Display your top skills after the summary points and near the top of your resume so as to best catch the hiring manager’s eye. This is where you can make a two-column table with bulleted skills and top traits.
After the key skills, summarize your professional experience starting with your most recent career. This is where you can pat yourself on the back a little bit by showcasing what you’ve done throughout your career. Here are some sample questions to help draw out professional experience
- If you received a promotion, why?
- Did you implement a new idea or process?
- Did you lead any notable projects?
- Did you solve a challenging situation that involved people, processes, quality control, costs, resources, etc?
- Did you work with other teams and/or lead/recruit/hire staff?
- How have you been involved in developing and implementing strategic plans for the business?
- How has your performance aligned with the business goals?
Think back to past performance reviews to add some meat to this section. Weave your career highlights into your professional experience section to tell your work story. But, remember, to keep the professional section clear, concise, and commanding – start each sentence with action verbs and avoid run-on sentences. If a Hiring Manager or Recruiter can’t quickly understand your point, it will get lost!
4. Give Some Metrics
Just like all award-winning movies have strong supporting actors/actresses, make sure your resume includes key metrics supporting your success. How much did you reduce employee turnover? Did you save your department time or money by implementing a new idea or process? Back up key skills and achievements with money and/or percentage metrics.
It’s a Wrap
After you’ve finished updating your resume, review your LinkedIn account to make sure it reflects similar changes. Before making profile changes in LinkedIn be sure to turn off “Sharing Profile Edits” (in the Settings–>Data & Privacy–>Visibility–> Share Job Changes, Education Changes, etc section) so your network isn’t bombarded with notifications. Turn the option back on right before making your final update so your network receives one notification.
Finally, don’t forget to contact us if you need resume or job search help!
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