In this blog post, I’m going to teach you the top 10 resume tips that’ll help to lend you more interviews and ideally job offers.
Let’s get started.
1. Your profile or summary
That’s the primary section on your resume that potential employers will see. You want to form sure that it’s short and sweet yet informative, and it should only be about two or three bullet points max and it should emphasize your technical background not your soft skills.
For example, if you were a delegated accountant trying to find a replacement opportunity you’d probably start your first sentence something like this; a delegated CPA with strong financial reporting and planning experience in large public companies within the technology and healthcare industries, that might be your first bullet point.
Then your second bullet point would then emphasize more of the software skills, the technical skills that you simply have. So you could say something like; possess strong working knowledge of Microsoft Excel ASAP and Oracle. The last two I just mentioned were accounting software systems.
So if you do not have that have in your non accountant, then just disregard that. But anything that’s software related or even languages, anything that’s technical that you simply can means right at the start of your resume would be vital .
2. Mirroring your work experience to the job that you’re applying for
Mirroring your experience means watching the work description, and asking yourself if you’ve got an equivalent duties experience qualifications that the rule is posing for you to possess . If you don’t, then you do want to ask yourself if this is appropriate for you to be applying for this role.
At this point in time maybe you need to keep staying at your current job, and try to see if there’s any way that you can take on some duties that match up to the ideal job that you want to apply for. If you do already have some of the experience then you don’t really need to worry about this tip it’s just another check that you need to make now.
3. Highlighting the buzzwords and using them while you’re writing your work experience and describing your job descriptions
In your resume, you want to look first at the job description in detail. Take a highlighter, and start highlighting the exact keywords and buzzwords that the job is asking for because what you’re going to do is take those same buzzwords and keywords and then match them onto your resume.
Meaning, start to formulate your sentences based on what the job description is about so that when the hiring manager actually looks at your resume, they can see that there’s a clear indication that you simply are good match for the role because your experience matches up to the role.
4. Speak in the hiring manager’s language not your own
This is just about an extension of the third tip, what I mean by that’s you actually want to mimic the words that are utilized in the work description because when a possible employer reads your resume they need to read it during a way that it’s quick.
It’s really easy they’re just skimming it, they’re not even reading it and so they want to make sure that they pick up on the keywords that they require for this job. so if you’re ready to catch on to those buzzwords and incorporate them within the phrases that you simply placed on your resume for your job experience, then that’s only going to help you.
So for instance , if employment description says something like; prepare financial statements then you are going to place it in your resume, and you are going to mention prepare financial statements on a monthly quarterly and yearly basis. so you’re just finishing off the sentence and giving it a touch bit more detail and tailoring it to your specific background and knowledge .
5. Your accomplishments
This is an area that I find key to really standing out from other candidates in a job search process, and a lot of people don’t even bother putting in their accomplishments for whatever reason. So you would like to vary you would like to reflect and truly believe your most up-to-date accomplishments in your current role: your most up-to-date role and in your previous roles.
An accomplishment is anything where you’ve saved time, saved money, improved processes, improve profitability, anything that’s helped your company or department, in some shape, or form, and ideally that’s quantifiable.
I’ll get into talking about more accomplishments after this make sure you start thinking about what are some of your major accomplishments that you’ve been recognized for in your roles.
6. Being job specific about your accomplishments
This tip is an extension of tip five, and what that means is you shouldn’t be listing your accomplishments in one major section on your resume. what that does is, it confuses employers and potential hiring managers because they can not tie back the precise accomplishment to the role that you’ve got accomplished them in.
This could have been 10 years ago, could have been five years ago, could have been just yesterday, but they have no idea because it’s not related to the specific jobs that you’ve had. What I mean by that’s you would possibly have your most up-to-date role, you will have an inventory of your job duties, and underneath that, you’ll put the word accomplishments, and underneath that you’re going to put your one, two, or three accomplishments that you simply have associated with that specific job.
That’s going to make it more easily read by employers and hiring managers and it gives them a lot more context as to where and when you achieved that accomplishments.
7. Quantification
Quantify wherever possible specifically again concerning your accomplishments. If you have been ready to save time, economize , improve some kind of process that’s resulted in some kind of quantifiable results, then you actually want to point that.
so think in terms of naira, think in terms of percentages, time, hours, days, months, whatever it is that you can indicate that says you went from this much down to this much, or this much up to this much. Whether it is your profitability, or cost that you’re talking about once you can quantify it. Just makes your accomplishment much more attractive to potential employers.
8. Make your dates transparent and thorough
Many candidates I’ve seen have only indicated their years with respect to their job titles. For example, if you were a financial analyst between 2013 to 2016, they’re only including the 2013 to 2016 and not including the months.
What this does is subconsciously, it makes potential employer or hiring manager think that you’re trying to hide something because it’s pretty easy for us to hide a gap in our work experience if we’ve not included the months. so as to seem transparent and honest, you actually want to incorporate the months, and what that does is, if there are gaps that are in your resume then you just have to be prepared to answer them in the interview so they don’t think that you’re trying to hide something.
9. Using bullets and not paragraphs
Writing lengthy tales of your job duties and lumping together your sentences on your resume is not going to get you close to getting an interview.
Like I said, hiring managers and employers skim your resumes. they do not read them, what that means is you need to use clear concise simple bullet points that are detailed enough and describe your job experience relevant to the role.
10. Keep it simple
Does it sound like you’re talking to Grandma, if yes, that’s a good sign. What I mean by that is, you want to explain your job experience on your resume in a similar way you would explain your job as if you’re talking to your grandmother. That means keep it simple. You don’t want to start out going all complicated and begin throwing in acronyms everywhere the place that folks don’t understand.
Instead, if it is a project that you’ve got worked thereon you’re pleased with , and you would like to point it on your resume then just simply describe what the project was about, what did it end in , what did you are doing , what was your role. However, don’t get into oh I worked with these X number of teams.
Name all the teams and discuss the titles of the people that you dealt with, and discuss the different acronyms for different meanings of the projects that you had to deal with. People just want to urge a really simple clear vision of what work you’ve done then therefore you would like to form it very clear concise and straightforward .