Your resume is your own personal promotional advertisement; including sufficient information to sell your skills and experience will determine whether you are asked for an interview.
Think of a promotional flyer; the main purpose of a flyer is to give relevant information to the reader. The same is the case with your resume. Your resume should highlight the most attention-grabbing, impressive and unique details about you, your work and your skills. Your resume doesn’t have abundant time to make a great impression on the employer. A professional recruiter can tell in seconds the time your resume has to get noticed. So your resume should help the employers to determine whether your skills match their needs.
In this extremely competitive market, it’s important that your resume and cover letter be specifically meshed toward a particular opportunity. Here are few creative ways to greatly improve your resume.
1. Make a great first impression.
The first section of your resume shows a clear picture of the value you’ll bring to an employer. The headline and the summary section can be used to capture the reader’s superfluous attention by emphasizing outstanding successes, experience, expertise and professional qualities.
Let’s give you an example of a creative Headline and Summary section:
- Headline: Marketing Manager with expertise in Marketing and PR
- Summary: Marketing Manager with seven (7) years of experience in advertising, Public Relations and Marking for several multinational Brands.
2. Select specific industries, businesses, and disciplines.
You cannot send the same resume to different companies for different jobs. Rather, you should customize each application for each employer. Your job search should focus on the targeted areas in industries, companies, businesses or services sector.
3. Highlight your expertise, capabilities, skills, and successes.
Contemplate your interests, experiences, skills, and achievements that you want to showcase to a potential employer. Try to add the obvious yet essential qualities of yours to make yourself unique and impress the employer. To have a satisfying career it is essential to understand your interests, expertise and qualities.
4. Improve readability.
Improve the readability of your resume by using the language that is comprehensive and understandable to those who make hiring decisions in these fields. Avoid using certain terms, phrases, and contractions that are distorted and unrecognizable outside of your workplace; as a result, reading your resume is like decoding a foreign language. Information on your resume should be easily and quickly gleaned and readable.
Make these changes to enhance readability:
- Adjust your font and add space by cutting words and spreading margins. You can expand your resume to two pages if necessary.
- Consolidate job positions rather than listing each assignment separately.
- Avoid repetitive information.
- Use one font and attributes (small and capital letter words, italics, character spacing bold,etc.) to differentiate headings and sub-headings.
- Try to eliminate content that reads like a job description.
5. Quantify your career, job, and work life accomplishments.
Try to quantify and monetize your career, job, work, and life accomplishments and the complexity of your accountabilities. Always mention numbers, dollars, and percentages instead of just describing your responsibilities.
Quantify this type of information:
- Sales, percentage of sales growth, and new accounts opened.
- “Held responsible for bringing in new clienteles” or “Brought in X new clients in X months”
- 500 Employees supervised directly.
6. Polish and showcase accomplishments.
Reflect your past accomplishments, illustrate the value you’ll bring to a prospective company. Your resume should accentuate the outcomes you have delivered with precise examples. You should utilize this section with concise sentences and bullets to make these results stand out.
7. Resume length.
You should be very specific about your resume length; if you have of seven years of experience working at different positions, your resume should be two pages. With low work experience, write a one page resume.
Every day, thousands of employers search for candidates; taking the time to improve your resume will result in better chances of getting hired. Get started today!
