Honestly, applying to jobs these days kind of sucks. It feels like you could spend hours scrolling through endless job postings on LinkedIn or Indeed, submitting a just-as-endless number of applications and resumes, just to hear absolutely nothing back from anyone for months at a time. On top of it all, every time you decide to open LinkedIn to subject yourself to hours of job application torture, you have to see all of the great new jobs all of the people you went to college with just started. Good for them!
It’s a highly frustrating process—one that we here at Payday HCM are very familiar with. Because, hey, while we all may work here now, there was a time when we were all looking for a job just as you, who is reading this article, may be doing. If you’re in this position, you may feel stuck wondering what more you can do to stand out to recruiters. At the end of the day, it all comes back to the resume.
In this article, we’ll go over what exactly a good resume looks like. We’ll discuss the ins and outs of crafting the perfect resume, from past work experience to skills, talents, and references. By the end, you’ll have all the tools you need to create the perfect resume and finally receive that coveted interview.
In this article, you will learn:
How To Structure Your Resume
Whether you’re building a one-story duplex or a mansion depends on the kind of foundation you lay. Ensuring the structure of your resume is sound is critical to crafting a good resume.
Start With Everything, Then Narrow It Down
Before you even begin writing the actual resume, start with just writing down everything you could think to include on it. The Harvard Business Review calls this creating a “back-office” resume. This includes past work experience as much as it does talents and skills.
The point here is to distinguish what you want to include in your resume from what you don’t. Seeing everything laid out in front of you will help to decipher what is important to you to include and what may not stand out to a potential employer. Ultimately, a good resume isn’t about quantity but quality.
Use Templates (With Caution)
Nowadays, the internet is rife with various resume templates that, for all intents and purposes, are very good. Of course, the flipside to this is they are on the internet: anyone and everyone has access to them, and you bet there are a hundred other resumes with the exact same template as yours.
The best way to use a template is as inspiration. Look at multiple different templates, find what you like about each one, and incorporate them into a resume of your own design. Is this harder? Yes, but two things will come out of this: one, you’ll have a well-crafted template that no one else has, and two, you can add graphic design to your list of skills depending on how crazy you decide to go.
What To Include In A Resume
According to a study performed by the job site Ladders, recruiters spend only 7.4 seconds looking at a resume on average. That means you need to be especially precise about what information you choose to include on your resume.
Summarize Your Experience
The first thing at the top of your resume, after your name of course, should be some sort of professional summary or summary of expertise. You want this to be short—no more than a few sentences—but it should draw in your reader.
The key here is to be as specific and brief as possible. You don’t want to overwhelm the reader with an autobiography of your entire professional life, but you also want to highlight what makes you unique. This is the part of the resume that will make you actually seem like a person, not just a list of jobs on a piece of paper. Make it your own.
Only Include Relevant Experience And Skills
Using your “back-office” resume, you should whittle it down to around 4-5 relevant job experiences depending on how much experience you have as well as the kind of job you’re applying to. According to Business News Daily, consider creating a different resume for each job you’re applying to that highlights the relevant skills and experience for that job.
Again, the most important thing to remember here is brevity: you don’t want your resume to exceed more than one to two pages, so cutting out unnecessary details is crucial. You don’t want the most relevant job experience to go unseen because it was tucked all the way onto page four.
Cater To The Robots
If you’re applying to a job in the twenty first century, it’s likely that some sort of applicant tracking system is viewing your resume before any human actually does. This means that if the robot doesn’t like it, the recruiter won’t even see it.
To avoid this, make sure you focus on including key words that are in the job description. You also want to make sure your resume can be easily scanned by the system: don’t include unnecessary graphics or tables and take care with how you write out your past job experiences (company name, then location, then the title, and finally the start and end dates).
Things To Avoid When Creating Your Resume
Just as there are things to do when creating a resume, there are things not to do. You’ll want to avoid some of these common pitfalls so that your resume is foolproof.
Make It Short And Sweet
As we’ve said before, the worst thing a resume can be is too long. You want to make sure you avoid being too wordy. Any place where you can afford to cut down, do it.
This especially applies to the section of your resume focused on past experience. It can be easy to lose yourself in a million bullet points highlighting every little thing you did on a day-to-day basis. Instead, think about the tasks you did and what came out of those tasks. What you achieved should be the bullet points.
Avoid Copy-Pasting And Make Sure To Proofread
It can be easy to plug in the job description from a similar job to serve as bullet points for your work history. As tempting as this may be, it’s also a good way to get your resume to look like everyone else's.
Again, much like the templates, there are probably a hundred other candidates who have done the same thing. Take the time to make your resume your own.
It’s also important to proofread. It can feel good to submit the resume as soon as you finish it, but one spelling error could be the difference between getting the interview and not. Take the extra few minutes to look it over.
Take Your Job Hunt To The Next Level With A Great Resume
According to CNN, the number of job openings in the U.S. reached its lowest level since January of 2021 this past July. This can be a scary thought for someone looking for a job. A smaller number of job openings means an already-competitive job market just got even more competitive. And for most, it may feel like you were already struggling to compete. Luckily, if you utilize the tips in this article, your resume should give you the upper hand you need to secure that interview.
Once you finally get the interview and, hopefully, that coveted job offer, you may be left having to decide between one job and another. This might mean deciding which job has the better benefits. Learn more about what ancillary benefits you should look for in a benefits package.
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