Land A Job Interview With These Resume Tips

Recruiters or hiring professionals looking at hundreds of resumes every week. They have seconds with each resume to skim through and decide if it deserves a closer look. There’s no single secret to help job seekers create a perfect resume.

When you’ve incorporated key components within your resume, the chances of landing an interview will increase. Here are some aspects to consider when making your resume.

Keep Only Relevant Information

It is tempting to put as much information on your resume as you can think of. Then hope the reader will pick and choose what they want to read. The truth is, if they see irrelevant information, they may stop reading the resume.

It can be difficult to think about which relevant information to include. Here’s some help.

Think about the experiences you’ve had that could lead to success in the role you’re applying for.

You may be proud of a certain accomplishment or certification you’ve earned in the past. If the experience doesn’t translate to your potential new role, then it’s just wasting space on your resume.

Clear & Concise Wording and Formatting

Your resume should use simplistic language that’s easy to read. The hiring manager likely doesn’t have the same knowledge as you.

If they don’t completely understand the big words you’re using, it could put a barrier between the two of you. That’s difficult to overcome. Use short sentences and simple words in your resume. Save the technical language for the interview when you’re talking to like-minded people.

The length of your resume should be no more than about two pages. The formatting should have enough white space to make it easy to read.

Bullet points are great to use. They highlight important achievements and are impactful to the reader.

Keep It Error Free

You can never proofread your resume too much. It doesn’t matter how clear and concise your resume is. Even if you are clearly the best candidate for the job from an experience perspective, grammatical errors can quickly get your resume thrown into the trash.

After you’ve proofread your resume, have a second set of eyes look it over as well. Your resume is the first opportunity to make an impression to a potential employer. The chances of even getting a phone interview go down when there are typographical errors on it.

Target Your Resume

Sending out generic resumes to dozens of companies never worked in the past. It won’t work in today’s job searching climate. Companies want to know what you bring to the table specifically for them. They want to get the sense you want to work for them.

One of the best ways to create a resume that leads to interviews is to target the specific employer. This will not only grab the attention of the reader immediately, but it will also show you have done your homework. It also shows that you are interested in the company.

Research companies of interest to identify their:

• Needs
• Challenges
• Culture

Once you do this, you can explain in your resume how you can enhance or fit into the company. You’ll be much more likely to get a response from an employer when they can clearly see you’ve done your homework on them.

Focus on Your Achievements

Many individuals focus on what their responsibilities have been at their jobs. They should instead focus rather than what they have actually achieved.

Prospective employers want to know what your skills are. They want to know how you have used those skills to accomplish things in your past work history.

Think about the requirements of the job to which you are applying to. Focus on the skills you need to meet the demands of the position.

Optimize Your Resume For ATS

Companies today can receive dozens of resumes each day for any given job posting. This is why many of these companies use an Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to help them filter through the resumes. They will be presented with the ones that match the specific keywords. You may be the best candidate for a particular job, but if your resume isn’t optimized for ATS, you’ll never be discovered.

Differentiate Yourself

The majority of resumes look the same. The best resume format is one that’s clean and concise and differentiates your skills. This is where your personal branding enters the picture.

Your resume needs to list your hard skills, but also demonstrate some of your personality. This provides an insight as to who you really are. You’ve worked hard on your personal branding, so use it to your advantage to differentiate yourself from your competition.

The end goal of every resume should be to ultimately get the job, but the first step is getting an interview. No matter what stage you’re at in your resume writing adventure; consider these aspects to assist in landing that interview, and that job.