Write A Work History Section With Numbers And Action Verbs
Use numbers when listing your accomplishments on your resume. Theyre eye-catching and show you have a history of delivering results.
Even if you didnt work in a data-driven field, you can still find numbers in:
- how many customers you served
- what percentage increase in sales or efficiency you achieved
- how much money you saved your company
Heres how that should look on a resume:
Customer Service Representative
Acme Inc., Hilo, HI / July 2016April 2020
- Provided basic technical support for clients on a wide range of company products, resolving issues at a 90% rate
- Received an average 85% customer satisfaction rating to date, 15% higher than company average
- Handle 90+ calls daily, with duties including signing up new customers, retrieving customer data, presenting relevant product information, and canceling services
- Suggested a new tactic to persuade canceling customers to stay with the company, resulting in a 5% decrease in cancellations
Also, focus on achievements rather than responsibilities. Bullet points that begin responsible for dont tell the hiring manager much about what you achieved for your previous employer.
Instead, use powerful resume words and action verbs that describe why you excelled in the position. For instance, check out these action verbs :
Administrative Assistant
% Of Candidates Dont Get Invited To An Interview Make Sure You Are In The 25%
Remember how crucial your resume is – how over half the cut of candidates is done on the basis of resumes alone. You are going to need to make sure you resume is the very best it can be. As such, before you submit your resume, you need to subject it to some serious quality control. This is a three step process:
How To Make A Professional Resume With Templates From Envato Elements
Now that you know where to find great resume templates, lets take a look at how to create a professional resume with an Envato Elements template. For the purposes of this tutorial, Ill be using the CV Resume template from Envato Elements:
This template has a simple and versatile design that can be used for any type of corporate job application.
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What Your Resume Should Look Like In 2020
Rebecca Henninger is a resume writing expert and accountability partner who focuses on smarter job searches and recession-proof careers.
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Wondering what your resume should like in 2020? In my experience, the most important consideration for a 2020 resume is that it is mobile-friendly. Yes, you will at some point be printing out the resume for a hiring manager to read and review during an interview, but the first view in your networking and job search efforts is likely to be on mobile. Particularly while the majority of the population is still working at home, the likelihood your resume will be viewed on a small screen is extremely high. So, what does this mean?
What is mobile-friendly design?
Think about the way you view things on your phone or small screen. It needs to be easy to skim with clean fonts and lots of white space. In addition, think about using an E or F pattern with text left-justified. In a study published by Ladders, researchers used heat map testing on resumes and other documents to show that this is the most efficient presentation for optimizing natural reading patterns.
While applicant tracking systems can read most fonts, sans serif fonts are more modern and have a clean aesthetic. Bold and italics can be used to highlight important text, but should be used sparingly. Consider highlighting keywords at the front of a bullet, job titles and company names.
What about graphics?
Resume Format : Functional Resumes
Functional resumes focus more on relevant skills than work history. While the chronological format highlights work experience with detailed summaries of the achievements within each position, the functional format focuses on the applicants skill set relevant to the role you are applying for.
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Make Your Experience Section Easy To Skim
One of the most challenging parts of writing your resume is balancing the amount of information that needs to be included with making it easy to skim. As we mentioned above, recruiters allot a matter of seconds to each resume. Because of that, you dont want to include large blocks of text or too many bullet points. Condense everything as much as you can and use an appropriate number of bullets to convey that you are the right fit for the job.
How To Identify Resume Keywords
If you’re not already familiar, Applicant Tracking Systems are pieces of software that companies use to help automate the hiring process.
After you hit submit on your online application, the ATS software scans your resume looking for specific keywords and phrases.
If the language in your resume matches up, the software sees it as a good fit for the role and will pass it on to the recruiter. However, even if you’re highly qualified for the role but you don’t use the right wording, your resume can end up sitting in black hole.
Translation? If you want to boost your chances of getting seen and getting hired, you need to write a resume that is optimized the right way, using the right resume template.
This can be a little tricky to figure out on your own, which is exactly why I created a tool called ResyMatch.io!
ResyMatch is a free resume scanner and optimizer that will help you identify the exact keywords, experience, and formatting you need to include on your resume for each job you apply for!
Here’s how it works:
First, head over to ResyMatch.io, upload your resume on the left, and paste your target job description on the right:
ResyMatch will scan your resume and compare it to your target job description. The tool will spit out a match score based on four categories ATS Best Practices, Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and a Sales Index :
When you write a resume, your goal is to include those keywords at the same frequency that you’d find on the job description.
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What Should Your Resume Look Like In 2021
by leahlambart | Sep 25, 2020 | Job search, Outplacement, Resume writing, Uncategorized |
As the job market has become more competitive in a post-Covid-19 world, having a compelling, modern and keyword optimised resume has never been more important. Recruiters will be reviewing larger volumes of resumes and in many cases, a bot will decide whether your resume is in or out before it is even seen by a human. So, what do you need to do, to have a best practice resume in 2021?
To give yourself the best chance of securing an interview, there are the five key areas that you need to pay attention to:
- Crisp writing and succinctness needless words and phrases do nothing but distract and overwhelm your readers
- Keyword optimised includes keywords that would match the keywords in the role description of your ideal next role
- Clean and simple formatting use a clean, modern design and a sleek font
- Perfect grammar and descriptive storytelling
- Maximum of 4 pages in length
In most cases, a recruiter will only scan the first page of your resume and decide whether to read on, so it needs to quickly attract the attention of the reader. We suggest including your LinkedIn URL, and your phone and email address. Now is the time to get a Gmail address if you are still using Hotmail or Yahoo, as these old email addresses are not projecting a professional image. In addition, many Applicant Tracking Systems send a Hotmail address to spam.
Dont Restrict Work Experience To Work
Recently out of college with little work experience? Consider including major projects and papers you worked on as a student. Group projects and large research papers can involve the types of skills that many employers are after: communication, writing skills, time management, focus, project management, teamwork and research just to name a few, Reynolds said.
It can be tricky to decide where to place this kind of experience on your resume, but if the work youve done has largely occurred in an academic setting, the experts recommend listing it separately under a Relevant Experience section. Use titles like research partner, strategy lead, or project manager, and make clear any time restrictions you were bound by to emphasize that you are comfortable working on a deadline.
Prospective employers will be impressed by your ability to connect the dots from the classroom to the real world and communicate value beyond an assignments scope.
Pro tip: Only highlight projects that are relevant to a potential role.
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Creating A Resume Skills Section
The skills section is an essential part of your resume. However, there are several different ways to approach creating yours.
Here are a few examples demonstrating the different ways you can format your resumes skills section:
Example 1
If you have many relevant hard and soft skills, add them to your resume skills section using separate bullet points, like this:
If youre a student or recent graduate and have no significant job skills yet, there are still plenty of things you can list in your resume skills section. Heres an example of a skills section written by a candidate with no work experience:
Example 2
Another way to organize your skills section is by using bars to provide employers a rough estimate of your proficiency.
This type of skills section is particularly popular with more creative professions, like graphic design or social media management:
How Long Should A Resume Be
No matter which of the three formats you decide to go with, it should fit neatly onto one single sided page without crowding.
Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, and in some cases , a slightly longer resume is acceptable.
Anything longer than that and youve moved out of the world of resumes and into the world of CVs which are acceptable, but ONLY in VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES.
Keep in mind this isnt your autobiography!
This is meant to give a hiring manager just enough information about you that they feel compelled to call you in and meet you face to face!
To put it bluntly, the average hiring manager spends initially between 10-20 seconds on each resume which means you have 10-20 seconds to catch their eye. The last thing you want to do is give them something thats messy, confusing, or unorganized.
Rather than spend an additional 10 seconds trying to figure out your resume, most hiring manager will just throw it awayand we dont want that!
Ok, so what about fonts, margins, paper, etc?
Lets start with fonts.
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Write A Winning Resume Introduction
Placed at the top of your resume, a well-written resume introduction briefly introduces your key qualifications and skills, and convinces employers to continue reading your application.
There are many different types of resume introductions used by job seekers today, including the:
However, the two most commonly used introduction styles are the resume objective and the resume summary.
What Should A Resume Look Like In 2020
Jobs have changed so much in recent years. If youre not up on the latest programs/apps/skills in your field , you might not get where you want to go.
Have resumes, too, taken on a new identity? We spoke with two hiring experts to find out what yours should look like now, what not to include, and what traditional advice is still relevant and effective today.
I have strong feelings about resumes, says Sandra McCall, operations director at Casamigos Tequila, in White Plains, NY. Ive heard that the average resume gets three seconds of attention from an HR person whos looking at it. I would say I give them at least five seconds. But they are all very different, and the faster I can zoom in on the information I need, the more time I will probably devote to reading.
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Design Tip: Create A Website To Add To Your Resume
An online portfolio helps potential employers see samples of your work. Template design from Squarespace
Unsurprisingly, digital resumes and portfolios are only growing in popularity. While this has been prominent for freelancers and those in creative industries who rely on portfolio presentations, the importance of an online presence is now widespread no matter your industry.
When creating your website, clearly display your contact information, previous experience and examples of work, plus links to your other public profiles like LinkedIn.
Having a sleek, professional website also allows for greater exposure, and helps the recruiter learn more about you before you even enter an interview.
When designing your website, make a lasting impression by designing a bold cover page that has your name, a picture of yourself and what your specialty is. Be inspired by Scallop Seashell Photographer Portfolio Website and Pink Events Planner Portfolio Website.
Why You Should Care About How Your Executive Resume Looks
Before I get into what your resume should look like in 2020, I want to first address a question I often hear from executives I work with. They usually say, I have over 30 years of work experience why does it matter how my resume looks?
And to some degree, theyre right.
What you include in your resumefrom your relevant work experience and education to your expert-level skills and professional qualificationsshould matter more than what it looks like. The good news is that those things are important.
However, with up to 250 resumes coming in per job posting, hiring managers often see the same traditional, bullet-list-only chronological resume. This tired format just regurgitates a candidates employment history.
Because its not visually engaging, hiring managers have a harder time distinguishing one candidate from the next. And that means they could pass by your resume before even reading your sales pitch .
This is why a creative, eye-catching resume makes all the difference.
With one, youll capture the attention of hiring managers and hook them like a fish. Its much easier to reel them in, so to speak, when your work experience and other qualifying attributes leap off the screen or page.
But, keep in mind, theres a fine line here. Going overboard with your visuals wont help you either. So heres how to strike the right balance:
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Creating An Effective Resume
The short amount of time recruiters, hiring managers, and prospective employers take to review your resume is also the time your future career path gets decided. Employers take it to the next level when searching for the right candidates to fill a job position. This is why they use top applicant tracking software and other tools to get the right candidates hired. Also, this is why its essential to already have your best foot forward at the very first stage of job hunting, which is sending out several resumes.
Keeping your resume simple, using the appropriate templates, and making sure you meet all qualifications for the position are some of the most important factors in building an effective resume. In todays highly technological era, you must also consider various ATS platforms that most companies use to automatically screen your resume. There are also several freelance platforms where organizations can search a database of candidates filtered by criteria, such as skills, experience, and more.
These resume trends can help keep your ground in the globally competitive market. Indeed, building and updating your resume can cost you a lot of time and resources. However, youll soon find that it is well worth the extra effort as it means getting you next to a paycheck and achieving your career goals, despite the challenges to the job market that the pandemic brings.
References:
Highlight Your Relevant Job Skills
Hiring managers are on the lookout for candidates who have relevant, job-specific skills. While listing a heap of skills on your resume doesnt actually prove youre skilled, incorporating your various skills into different sections will catch the eye of whoever is vetting your application.
For instance, you can showcase your hard and soft skills in your introduction and work experience section. And of course, you should also list your most valuable abilities in your resumes skills section.
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What Is A Resume
According to Wikipedia, a résumé is a document used and created by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments.”
In other words, it’s your professional story. For example, a programmer must have specialized education or completed programming courses, be able to work with computer programs, write codes, know languages, and so on. How does a potential employer know that you have all the necessary qualities, that you have received the right education and are able to perform the tasks? That is right they refer to your resume.
A resume is the first thing you should have when looking for work. It may be said that when applying for a job, the mandatory presentation of resumes is one of the elements of modern business etiquette rules, but at the same time, it is one of the most effective ways to advertise on the labor market.
Why The Design And Layout Of Your Resume Is So Important
A great resume is about substance, so while it might be tempting to dress up your resume with fancy fonts and graphics, its much more compelling to have a clean and fuss-free design and layout. According to Hallam, there are other good reasons to ensure a simple resume design:
- Resumes with graphics and too many columns wont actually get through Applicant Tracking Systems , so a poorly-designed resume may not ever be seen by potential recruiters.
- Fancy or hard-to-read fonts are distractingbusy recruiters and employers wont view them favourably.
- An aesthetically appealing, functional resume is a reflection of who you are as a potential employeeit shows your professionalism.
This doesnt mean youre expected to come up with a knock-out resume design yourself, thoughchoosing a simple resume template and making it your own is the best way to go.
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