Your resume is your best opportunity at selling yourself to a prospective employer. It’s like a personal marketing document, designed to show people what you can do, why you can do it and give them a little taste of what a great person you are.
On average, an employer will spend five to seven seconds reading your resume before deciding whether it goes in the pile of potentials or is filed in the waste paper basket. That doesn’t give you much of an opportunity to make an impression, so the resume has to be right.
Here are five tips for creating a winning resume.
Match your resume to the job description
Don’t just submit a generic resume to every job that you apply for. If you match your resume to the job description, you are not only showing that you tick the boxes that the company is looking for from their new employee but that you’ve also taken the time to tailor your resume to the job, showing that you’ve considered the role rather than just firing off the same resume you do to every other company.
Make sure your experience stands out
Let the prospective employer see just how experienced you are in the field. By showing that you’ve had Quality Education And Jobs in the past, you’ll be placing yourself ahead of those who maybe don’t have that same experience. Showing that you’ve worked for a company on a level just below the one you are now applying to or a rival company is always likely to turn heads – most managers can’t resist the coup of taking a worker from one of their competitors.
Quantify your achievements
Saying that in a previous role you helped “grow the business” means nothing. Take Apple for example. Tim Cook could say he has “grown the business” and it be taken to mean he bought in one extra customer rather than overseeing an 84% increase in income. Quantifying exactly what you have done offers evidence of what you have achieved and is much more impressive than throwing in soundbites.
Structure your resume correctly
Having a clear structure is important for your resume. You’ll want your name, address, phone number and email at the top so that an employee knows exactly where to find your contact details. They don’t want to be searching through mountains of words to find out how to invite you to an interview. A strong summary giving an overview of who you are should follow with your most recent roles and key job responsibilities next. End your resume with references to show that you are confident in former employees recommending you for a new role.
Format it appropriately
Keep the layout of your resume simple with lots of white space – the last thing any business owner wants is to be confronted with more words than in War and Peace. Bulleted information can help keep everything in order and makes it pleasant on the eye, choose a professional and easy to read font and never allow your resume to stretch to more than two pages.