It was already hard to find work before the pandemic. But with thousands worldwide losing their jobs and companies shutting down, it’s become much harder to land a job. If you’re looking for work, you’ll need to stand out from the rest. Here are a few tips to help you figure out what the best resumes out there are doing right, and which elements and practices you can apply to your own job search.
Check Your Resume
Take a good, hard look at your resume. Perform a resume assessment. What are your weaknesses? Which areas need improvement? If you have no idea where to get started, do your homework. Research about the best resumes and see what they’re doing right. Which strategies can you use?
Personalize the Content
Hiring managers often use keywords when they search for applicants. For instance, if they’re looking for someone with SEO experience, then they’ll use that as part of the search term or filter when they check out potential applicants. That’s why it’s important to use words from the job description. That will show hiring managers that you are a good match for the position they’re hiring. Also, by customizing the resume so that it will contain key hiring phrases, your resume is more likely to come up when recruiters search online databases.
Add Everything Relevant
You’ve already personalized the content by ensuring that you mention key phrases. That goes for the experience and background you’ll mention. Meaning, add anything relevant—such as appropriate skills, your training, and education, your work history—will make your hiring manager think about how well you suit the position. Any experience and position that demonstrates your experience and how you helped your team will help you stand out from the rest of the candidates.
Be Brief
Don’t ramble on too long. Resumes must be concise. If you babble, that could be a point against you. If you want the hiring managers to choose you over the rest of the applicants, you’ll want to stand out through your work history, experience, and track record and not for the wrong reasons.
Check for Mistakes
It’s easy to make mistakes or grammatical slipups when you’re focused on making the right impression. Maybe you’re concentrating so much on saying the right thing, or on wondering what details you’ll need to trim out or add to make your resume as interesting, compelling, and worthy of any HR staff’s attention. However, you could end up making embarrassing spelling and grammar mistakes. You can easily avoid that by checking through the file—again—before you hit send.
Join a Platform
It’s not always easy to find job posts. Look for a reputable job search platform and sign up. Send your resume there and make sure it doesn’t have any mistakes. If you’re gunning for a particular position, then check job postings and take note of the common keywords and phrases used. Add those to your resume as well to improve your chances of getting hired.
