Customize For The Job You Want
Respond directly to the job description and explain exactly why you are the candidate for the role. You can do this by relating your accomplishments to the elements of the job role.
Employers want candidates to understand the role they are applying for, and the more you can demonstrate this, the more your CV will stand out.
It might take longer for you to write your CV, especially when applying for a large number of roles, but it if it helps you to find your perfect position then it is time well spent!
How To Make A Resume That Stands Out In : A Guide That Stands Out
So you want to know how to make your resume stand out to recruiters?
Youre here because the generic best practices from recruiters advice you got until now was not very helpful. You already knew it all. You know what the baseline is.
But do you know how to write a visually appealing resume that makes you stand out from the crowd?
What makes a resume pop?
We, at Enhancv, asked ourselves the same questions. To find the standout factors, we did some research and testing.
We started by analyzing our clients resumes that helped them secure jobs at the likes of Amazon, Spotify, PwC, Verizon, and other top companies. We identified all the resume components that catch the eye of employers and recruiters. Then, we performed solid A/B testing, and finally, put together all our findings into one test resume. This test resume gathered over 1 million views, got covered by CNBC and Business Insider, and was praised by Mark Cuban.
To put it simply it stood out and attracted attention.
The following advice helped thousands of candidates get interviews and land jobs at leading companies. Well share their resumes as case studies and explore different ways to make your resume stand out from the rest.
Heres what youll learn from this guide:
Apply Formatting Tricks To Create Stand Out Resume
Watch Out For White Space
According to an eye-tracking study from Ladders Inc, resumes that lack white space turn recruiters off.
The easier your resume reads, the more chances there will be that the recruiter reads every section of it.
If you have a lot to put on your resume, use smart layout and custom sections.
The two resume examples feature the same amount of information, yet the second one is much more engaging and comfortable to digest.
Pro tip:after you filled all the sections of your resume, look at it with your eyes squinted. If your resume feels like a big cluttered black spot, start decluttering it.
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Show Your Career And Personal Story
So far, weve managed to make every section of your resume stand out and engage recruiters, showcasing your experience and achievement in the most convincing way.
Lets apply some final effort with custom sections that will push your resume into a league of its own.
Here are the four custom sections our customers most often add to their job-winning resumes:
You can access Marcelluss full resume template here.
But so did every candidate who was aiming for an executive role at Verizon.
At this level, candidates rarely can outperform each other on a skill basis.
At the end of the day, organizations hire humans, and if recruiters feel that theres a person behind all the achievements on your paper, they will remember you.
Thats why Marcellus decided to add A Day In My Life and Life Philosophy sections.
With these two custom sections, his resume narrative switched from experienced network executive to experienced network executive with a strong work ethic and a solid plan.
Exactly what Verizon, a global network mogul, needs.
Still with us? Good.
Its all fun and games until we mention proper formatting. Are there any tricks to it? What colors and fonts are appropriate? Lets see how you can make your resume stand out visually.
What Is Objective And Example
Objective is defined as someone or something that is real or not imagined. An example of objective is an actual tree, rather than a painting of a tree. Objective means someone or something that is without bias. An example of objective is a juror who doesnt know anything about the case theyre assigned to.
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2 Choose The Right Font
Your resumeâs font is incredibly important because it is the very first thing that the reader will notice. It sets the tone for the resume and is used to convey the purpose of your application. Think about it: do you read comic books and textbooks in the same way, in the same tone? Of course not! So why would it be a good idea to use comic-style, goofy fonts on a professional document?
We have a whole article devoted to the best fonts for resumes, but here are the highlights.
-
Use a professional-looking font
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Use a font that will be easy for a machine to read
As you can see, a problem arises in which fonts that may be easy for humans to read are not always the best fonts for an ATS.
To ensure that most ATS tools are able to read your resume, itâs important to use a basic font. Keep the color dark, and avoid any special characters such as fancy bullet points or ampersands in your vital information.
For the human readers, keep the font size above 11 at all times and try not to go any bigger than 14 except for headers.
Itâs also important to note that, while some fonts are professional-looking and great for an ATS, they may fail to help your resume stand out. For example, Times New Roman is easily scanned by ATS and looks simple and professional. Yet, itâs incredibly common and may look stale to a hiring manager whoâs just looked through 15 other resumes with the same font.
How Can I Make My Resume Stand Out 2021
Here are the best ways to make your resume stand out from the competition:
Besides, Should I pay someone to write my resume?
Hiring a professional writer is a good idea if youre looking for more money, responsibilities and a higher title. Since theres a lot of competition out there, youll want your resume to stand out and use all the help you can get.
As well as Can you go to jail for lying on a resume? Lying on your resume can land you in jail, get you fired, or leave you without legal recourse against an employer.
Furthermore Should I put an objective on my resume 2021?
Begin your resume with a summary of your qualifications not with an objective. Employers know what your objective is: to get hired. Be an effective marketer and consider the employers objective, which is to make the best hire.
What should my resume include 2021?
What your resume should look like in 2021
- List accomplishments instead of duties.
- Include strong data, numbers, and performance indicators where appropriate.
- Tailor your resume to the job description.
- Keep your resume to one page.
- Avoid an irrelevant skills section.
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How Can I Make A Good Resume
How to Write a Resume Step by step
What Else You Should Know About Skills
To recap: its more important than ever to frame your work experience through résumé skills.
- Hiring managers want to hire people based on their skills, then provide job-specific training.
- Still, many workers work on developing new skills outside of work by taking classes, participating in workshops or volunteering.
- The skills section of your résumé is very, very important.
- Customer service, sales and business development are currently the most in-demand skills.
Workers and hiring managers agreebuilding the workforce of the future means we all need to focus on what we can do, not just where weve been. So if youre ready to find your next job, its time to level up those skills.
This article originally appeared on CareerBuilder and is reprinted with permission.
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Include The Right Skills
The skill section may sound easyâyouâre pretty much just making a list of things that youâre able to do particularly well. Everyone knows what theyâre good at, right? Not quite.
Itâs very important to note that skills can be categorized into more specific skills or âhard skillsâ , or less specific skills or âsoft skillsâ . One of the biggest mistakes people make is failing to differentiate between their skill sets, and including too many of one or the other.
Pay attention to job listings and adjust your skills to better match the listing youâre applying to. If the role is particularly technical, weigh your skill section towards your applicable hard skills. If the role is something like sales or account management, make sure to include key soft skills like âcommunicationâ or âorganizationâ.
Your skills section is the best place to make sure you match your resumeâs keywords with the keywords required by the ATS. For ideas on what skills employers are looking for, check out this post on the best skills to put on your resume.
Focus on keywords
Look at the skills mentioned in the job description, if you have any of them and left them out of this section, get them in there. This is super important for getting through the applicant tracking system. Itâs also very important in showing the employer that you have the basic skills necessary to be successful. You can check out this post on keywords for your resume.
Use Summary That Captivates Recruiters
The summary section is a short paragraph or bulleted list that briefly describes your professional experience before the rest of your resume.
Sometimes Summary is called an Objective, especially if you are using it to explain why youre applying for the job.
- Baseline: short, easy-to-read, and impactful description of your professional experience
- Stand out: make your Summary memorable, use a proper layout.
Think of your Summary section as a cold email youre sending someone you dont know. If its a long, boring, and self-centered cold email, no one wants to read that.
But if you research your recipient, create an engaging and short cold email, you have a much higher chance of someone responding to it.
The Summary section, when done right, is one of the most powerful ways of aligning you to the position.
Sometimes youll hear the opinion that the Summary section takes too much space on your resume.
First, theres an easy fix to it.
Lets look at Daniels resume once again.
He puts the Summary section to the right of his Experience section. Why?
When recruiters scan your resume, they are checking your experience section first, but that doesnt mean they dont want to learn more about you after.
With his Summary, Daniel once again frames the recruiters perception, highlighting that he did the majority of his work experience remotely. It helps a lot given that the company he applied for, Intercom, is a fully remote organization.
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Six Tips To Make Your Resume Stand Out
Have you written your resume but aren’t sure that you have the right content? Have you modified it a few times and had people read it, but it just doesnt have that extra oomph that you think it needs? If you answered “yes” to one or both of these questions, you’re not alone.
Your resume is meant to share enough information about you to help you get an opportunity to reiterate or elaborate on your knowledge, skills and abilities at an interview. As a career coach who’s reviewed thousands of resumes and served in various hiring capacities, I’ve learned the do’s and don’ts of how to make a resume stand out. Here are six tips:
1. Determine what aspect of your career you need to showcase to demonstrate your knowledge, skills and abilities.
Usually when a company posts an open position, it includes a list of duties, required knowledge and responsibilities. Pay attention to information elsewhere in the job description as well, and read the company’s reports, minutes of strategic planning sessions and other publically available documents. And dont miss an opportunity to speak to the person who previously held the position, if you can.
2. Ask yourself, “Why is this statement important?”
3. Include activities that showcase your value.
4. Share the actions, purpose and results of each activity.
5. Dont use “I.”
6. Instead of using acronyms, explain or define the terms.
If you cant explain the acronym with one simple sentence, though, then just write out what it stands for.
Paper Resumes Are Still Important
Of course, in today’s age, hiring managers often visit LinkedIn profiles to skim through an applicant’s experience and presentation. Most hiring managers however do still rely on having a paper resume to provide them with a more curated and in-depth summary of one’s career.
A great resume is only a foot in the door, of course. and actual talent are paramount to landing the job of your dreams.
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What Is A Resume
A resume is a document that showcases a candidates qualifications for a job. It often includes their education, experience, skills and achievements. A resume is a great way to showcase how you could be an asset to the company. Having a polished resume is a great way to set yourself apart from other candidates applying for the same job. When creating a resume, its also important to understand the industry youre working in as well as the hiring company youre applying to tailor your resume to both.
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Tips To Make Your Resume Stand Out From The Competition
How can you get your resume to stand out from the competition? Online resume submission has made it much easier for candidates to apply for jobs than it was in the past. Unfortunately for job seekers, it has also increased the number of applicants for most positions.
Catching the eye of the typical recruiter who is wading through scores of resumes can be quite challenging. Here’s how to make it more likely that your resume will get noticed.
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Highlight Awards And Recognitions
- Baseline: candidates rarely have this section in their resumes
- Stand out: adding an Achievements section to your resume sets you apart from the majority of candidates in the hiring pool.
If we were to summarize what sets apart the majority of our customers whose successful resumes weve used throughout this guide, wed say custom sections.
Achievements, Awards, and Most Proud sections are all great examples.
Adding them within our resume builder is a one-step drag-and-drop process, but the most important part is that you can quickly change the whole layout based on your particular needs.
As mentioned before, Maximilian put his most impactful Achievements right next to his Experience section, amplifying the overall impact, which is critical when you work with Amazon partners.
But Julian Prim, who now works with PwC, took a different approach. His high-stakes analyst job required extra attention to detail and next to perfect time-management skills.
After all, thats what PwC had in mind for their operations specialist.
So Julian put his skills first to let recruiters know he checks all these boxes and added his Most Proud section below.
While Maximillianss resume narrative is an ambitious and impactful account manager, Julian Prim is an efficient and timid analyst. The layouts of their resumes work great for both of them.
Pro tip: with simple drag and drop you can quickly change layouts and thus how your resume narrative.
Target Your Document To The Job
Emphasize skills, accomplishments, and responsibilities which are most related to the requirements of your target job. To do this, find keywords in the job posting and incorporate them into your resume. You can also consider including a summary at the top of your resume that makes reference to the most relevant skills, accomplishments, and other qualifications.
A resume title or headline is another excellent way to get your resume noticed. This brief statement will go at the top of the resume just under your contact information and should highlight your primary strong points for this position.
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Include A Cover Letter
If you are worried about showing too much personality in a resume, including a cover letter can be a great way to show who you are, without taking away from the professional work experience and valuable skills in your resume. It is also nice to address some of the reasons why you think you would be great for the job and why you want to work with the person or company in question. But, like your resume, keep it short, sharp and to the point!
Get Your Resume Branded:
While employers care about your address, mobile number, and e-mail address, whats more important to them is how you do things differently what makes you unique, and what your bottom-line impact is in the organization. Ask yourself what you consistently do really well that is of value to the prospective employer. Once you identify it, turn it into a branding statement of three to four sentences, max.
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