As a job seeker, you already know that the job market is not an easy place to survive in. One thing that can help you survive is to create an edge, something that will set you apart from other candidates. A well-crafted resume is what you need to survive in this tough job market.

Even the best graduating student might stand no chance when it comes to landing a job. So, how do you create an appealing resume that will give you an edge in the job market? This article will provide you with valuable information to help you. Look out for these points.

• What is a Resume?
• What is the Job Market?
• What Should a Resume Look Like in 2021
• How to Write a CV That Will Get You Hired
• How to Make Your Resume Standout
• Job Search Tips for 2021
• Resume Writing Tips for Students
• Resume Writing Tips for Experienced Professionals
• How to Create a Resume With no Job Experience
• How to Answer the ‘Why Should We Hire You Questions’
• Common Resume Mistakes
• What do Employers Look for in A Resume
• 14 Things You Should Never Include In Your Resume
• 31 Tips That Will Give Your Resume an Edge in the 2021 Job Market

What is a Resume?

A resume is a written compilation of your education, work experience, credentials, and accomplishments. Most professional positions require applicants to submit a resume and cover letter as part of the application process.

It is important for you to spend the required time and effort in creating a great resume because your resume is the first document a hiring manager will look at when reviewing your application, and therefore is a true “first impression.”

What is the Job Market?

The job market (sometimes referred to as the labor market ) is the market in which employers search for employees and employees search for jobs. The job market is not a physical place as much as a concept demonstrating the competition and interplay between different labor forces.

What Should a Resume Look Like in 2021

When creating your resume, knowing what to include and where to include it will make a difference. Some details are not really important and you should not include them. Your interviewer probably has a lot of candidates to attend to, so they may not have enough time to spend on your resume. This lead us to our first point.

Keep Your Resume Simple

To help you simplify your resume, pay attention to the following points

• Use clear section headings and make them stand out with bold type, capital letters, and/or a different color.
• Make sure there’s plenty of white space—an overstuffed resume is hard to read.
• Skip the fancy graphics, pie charts, and illustrations, which don’t play well with resume-scanning software.

Make Your Skills Standout

Whether you put your skills section at the top of your resume or at the bottom, after your work experience, make sure the skills you list match the requirements for the job you’re applying to. Not sure what those are? Read the job description carefully to see which skills, programs, and keywords are mentioned. If there’s a requirement or responsibility listed in the job description that you’ve performed in a current or previous role, it should be on your resume.

Provide clear examples of your achievements

While it’s one thing to explain your daily tasks in previous roles, Robert suggests giving specific examples of the achievements you’ve had and the unique value you’ve offered to your previous teams.

“One big mistake applicants can make is listing their skills and experience, yet not paying enough attention to giving examples of their achievements. This is essential so hiring managers can understand why a job seeker’s skills and experience are the best match for the job they’re applying for.”

Robert also suggests highlighting your growth trajectory within the company.

Quantify Your Bullets

Wherever possible, add numbers and results to your bullet points to show the impact you had in a role. You can do this even if you’re not in numbers- or dollars-oriented role: How frequently did you do a task? How big was your team? How many people used your product?

Make your resume easily scannable

We know that recruiters are extremely busy, so it’s best to make their job as easy as possible. A suggestion might be to use an easy-to-read format and favoring bullet points instead of long sentences.

No matter how professionally job seekers conduct themselves in person, a resume will not receive serious consideration if it’s difficult to read. Resumes should not include several quirky fonts, the sections need to be lined up neatly and easy to read with the judicious use of columns, bold fonts, bullet points, and white space.”

By opting for these design elements, with one quick scan, recruiters are able to analyze your expertise and have a better understanding of what your specialties are, without needing to sift through the information for it.

How to Write a CV That Will Get You Hired

Do Not Add Too Many Details

Your resume should not have every work experience you’ve ever had listed on it. Think of your resume not as a comprehensive list of your career history, but as a marketing document selling you as the perfect person for the job. For each resume you send out, you’ll want to highlight only the accomplishments and skills that are most relevant to the job at hand

Put the Important Things First

In marketing speak, “above the fold” refers to what you see on the front half of a folded newspaper (or, in the digital age, before you scroll down on a website), but basically it’s your first impression of a document. In resume speak, it means you should make sure your best experiences and accomplishments are visible on the top third of your resume. This top section is what the hiring manager is going to see first—and what will serve as a hook for someone to keep on reading. So focus on putting your best, most relevant experiences first

Try to Put All The Detail in One Page

The two- (or more!) page resume is a hotly debated topic, but the bottom line is this—you want the information here to be concise, and making yourself keep it to one page is a good way to force yourself to do this. If you truly have enough relevant and important experience, training, and credentials to showcase on more than one page of your resume, then go for it. But if you can tell the same story in less space, Do it.

Make Your Contact Info Prominent

You don’t need to include your address on your resume anymore, but you do need to make sure to include a phone number and professional email address (not your work address!) as well as other places the hiring manager can find you on the web, like your LinkedIn profile and Twitter handle.

Get Help From a Professional

Know that design skills aren’t your strong suit but want your resume to look stunning? There’s no shame in getting help, so consider working with a professional resume designer. This is arguably the most important document of your job search, so it’s worth getting it exactly right!

How to Make Your Resume Standout

Craft Your Resume to Match the Job Description

Hiring managers have specific ideas about what skills and experiences candidates need to do well in open positions and your resume should mirror the description they’ve included in their listings or ads, says Mark Slack, a career adviser at Resume Genius.

“In a sea of bland candidates, the most captivating resume is the one that seems to match all of their requirements, including necessary technical skills, work experiences, and degrees, certifications, or licenses,” he says. “If your previous work experience is not relevant to the job description, you will need to get creative and frame your current skill set as being transferable into a new role.”

Put Your Accomplishments Forward, Not Your Responsibilities

Joseph Terach, CEO of Resume Deli, gives the example of a pizza delivery person: It’s not enough to say you deliver pizzas, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. “The question is: are you good at it? Or, did you deliver pizzas late, cold and in a crushed box to the wrong address?”

Instead of regurgitating your job description, focus on the accomplishments you’ve made while living up to that description. Describe the ways you’ve excelled in your profession and have gone above and beyond.

Use the Summary Section for Distinguishing Details

If you include a summary statement on your resume, remember it occupies the most valuable spot — front and center, Terach says. “So many job-seekers waste it on self-descriptors, such as ‘creative,’ ‘results-driven’ and ‘excellent communicator,’” he says. “Guess what? If you need to label yourself an excellent communicator, then you’re probably not one.” Instead, drop the generics and use the summary section to provide details of your achievements.

Ignore Irrelevant Information

Knowing what to leave off your resume can be as important as knowing what to put on it. You might think it’s a good idea to include as much information as possible to pad a weaker resume, but this approach can backfire.

Including irrelevant jobs or extraneous accomplishments from relevant jobs tells your potential employer that you don’t understand what they’re looking for, Terach says. “Don’t make your target reader fish through a bunch of noise in order to find what’s really important to her, because she won’t. She’ll assume that you don’t get it, and move on.”

Job Search Tips for 2021

If you have been in the job market for some time trying to get a job, you will agree with me that it is not easy. More than one in four employees (29%) said they are searching for jobs while employed, and 78% reported that they would be open to getting a new job if the right opportunity came along, according to a 2019 survey of over 1,010 employees from employment website CareerBuilder.

You need to be fully prepared for the 2021 job market, you need to be in the right position. Now is the time to start preparing yourself.

Focus more on networking than Your Resume

“People tend to get really into their documents, into the résumé and LinkedIn profiles. Yes, those should be relatively up-to-date, but assuming they are decent, focus first on talking to people.

“I would talk to friends, former colleagues, classmates, family friends, people who are either good at giving career advice, or good mentors or sponsors, or they have specific industry knowledge. I would tell them, ‘Oh, I’m trying to change jobs. This is my timeframe. What do I need to do first?’

“That can really lead to job offers because people like to hire people that they like and that they know, or that they know somebody who vouched for them. Even having those very preliminary exploratory conversations can land you an offer faster than applying to a million job boards.” – Cynthia Pong, career coach and founder of Embrace Change

Make a list of companies you want to work for

The best way to accelerate your job search is to start with a plan. As simple as this sounds, it’s often overlooked. Identify a clear job target. What do you want to do? Next, create a list of 25-35 target companies that you’d want to work for who hire people for your target role.

When you are building out your target list of companies, spend time evaluating your network looking for connectors. Who do you know at your target list of companies? Who can help you get an introduction?

Figure out the career story you want to tell

One of the most helpful things job seekers can do is to refine the narratives they share about themselves so that they feel compelled and authentic both to tell and to hear. This boosts job seekers’ confidence and capacity to land a satisfying job.

Job seekers reach out to a variety of people in their network (people who know their work, people who share their values and interests, people whose career pathways appeal to them), and have conversations in which they share what they are looking for and ask for feedback. Asking questions like ‘If you were interviewing me, what would you pick up on?’, ‘What resonates for you in what I’m sharing about myself?‘, and ‘What’s something I can do to present myself more effectively?’ helps job seekers to understand how others see them and to incorporate the strengths that others notice into their narratives.

Use scheduling to make the job search a priority

Block out some devoted job search time. Make this untouchable and stick to executing during the assigned time.

Make it clear to family or friends that this is protected time by either setting aside the time on family calendars or not responding to emails, engaging on social media, or taking calls or texts during this time. If you must give up the time, reschedule it immediately for that week if possible.

Target your job search so your application materials are specific

Pinpoint what you want to do next in your career. Job-seekers who are unclear about what their next career move spend more time in the job search process.

“The more specific you are in your job search, the better. A targeted job search allows you to focus your résumé, LinkedIn profile, and even your cover letter so that you are more likely to catch the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. You will also be able to successfully navigate applicant tracking systems because your résumé will be full of keywords that accurately match the industry and position.

Resume Writing Tips for Students

Looking for a job as a student is not easy, more so it writing a resume. You lack some experience and there is a lot of competition in the job market. The only way out is by writing a perfect student resume. One that impresses every recruiter and gets your foot in the door. The tips below will help you.

Tips for Writing a College Resume

Read below for tips on how to write a strong college resume.

• Use action verbs. Action verbs help show your responsibility. When describing your achievements, use action words. Words like led, researched and created to portray your experiences in an energetic way.
• Quantify when possible. Whenever possible, include numbers to show your achievements. For example, you might say that you worked the cash register at a store that managed $10,000 daily, or that you helped 50 – 100 customers daily at your retail job.
• Showcase the skills that qualify you for the job. Some skills are in high-demand for employers hiring college graduates, and there are other skills that specifically relate to the job for which you’re applying. Be sure to include the most relevant from each category on your resume.
• Carefully edit and proofread. Proofread your resume carefully before submitting it. A clean, error-free resume will make you look professional. Ask a friend or family member to read the resume for you as well.
• Use a resume example. Use a resume example or template to guide your own writing. A resume example can help you decide what kind of content to include, as well as how to format your resume.

What to Include in Your Resume

Here’s information on what to include when you’re writing your resume as a college student or recent graduate.

• Focus on education. Emphasize your academic history. Along with the name of your school and degree, include any achievements, such as a high GPA or any academic awards. If you have taken courses related to the job you’re applying for, list those as well.
• Include relevant jobs. Think about the skills and experiences required for the job you want. Include any internships or jobs where you developed these qualities. Even if your work experiences aren’t directly related, think of ways to highlight experiences you had that are relevant to the job you want. For example, you might include a former job as a cashier if it helped you develop customer service or leadership skills.
• Include extracurricular activities. Because you likely have limited work experience, emphasize any non-work activities. These might include clubs, sports, babysitting, volunteer work, or community service. All of these activities can show your skills and abilities.
• Include leadership experience. Have you held a position in a club, or been a captain on a sports team? Have you had any leadership responsibilities at your previous jobs? Be sure to list these experiences, as they show your ability to lead a team.

Resume Writing Tips for Experienced Professionals

You might argue that an executive-level professional has it tougher than the former. You’ve likely held several jobs throughout your career, working your way up and maybe even getting your feet wet in completely different industries or departments. For a lucky few, you may not have even had to interview at all, landing positions and promotions through your network alone.

The point is, at your level, the people you’ll be competing with for this job will come from many different paths. Your resume and your cover letter will need to impress.

Showcase your credentials at the top of your resume

This is a quick and effective change for anyone, regardless of how many years you’ve been in the field: Move your credentials, especially the ones that match your target position, to the very top of your resume. This is typically the first place recruiters will look, so having them front and center ensure they won’t get skipped.

List your core skills near the top, in an easy-to-read format

Even for executive-level positions, hiring managers will typically do a quick scan of your resume before getting into the details. To stand out immediately, make sure your core skills — also referred to as “core competencies” or “areas of expertise” — are listed in an easy-to-read format.

Moreover, make sure you’re choosing skills that directly correlate with the position you’re applying for. Take a look at the job description, if you have it, and customize your resume accordingly.

Include a Selected Achievements section at the top

If you’re a senior-level professional, you likely have a list of accomplishments to choose from. But this doesn’t mean you should list everything you’ve ever done! In Jake’s resume, for example, he chose accolades and achievements that highlight the specific results and impact he made. His “Selected Achievements” section, sometimes called “Career Highlights,” allows for quick skimming to understand his performance highlights. While a section like this isn’t mandatory, it’s a great way to show recruiters or hiring managers what you’re most proud of.

Include a link to your online profile

Did you know that 90 percent of employers search for candidates’ social media profiles online before setting up an interview? Make it easy on them by providing links to your social accounts or professional websites near your other contact information. In our executive-level resume sample above, Jake includes a custom link to his LinkedIn profile.

If you’d rather keep your online profiles hidden from recruiters, make sure to adjust your security settings or change your account name so they’re harder to find.

Focus on your most recent work experience

Most resumes will benefit from a chronological format, as it shows your career progression throughout the years. Notice how Jake’s resume sample places the most focus on his current position as Vice President of Human Resources.

Spend the most time here, with your current or most recent job, including details that will show the recruiter what your role entails and what type of company it is (big? small? non-profit?). This rule applies even if you haven’t been at your current job for very long — the only exception is if your current job is unrelated to your career goals or executive summary.

How to Create a Resume With no Job Experience

Decide on a resume format

There are a few dominant resume formats in use today: chronological, functional, and hybrid, which is a combination of the two. A chronological resume format lists a candidate’s work experience in reverse-chronological order. A functional resume format focuses on highlighting the candidate’s skills and achievements, rather than work experience.

While the functional resume format can be an attractive option for job seekers with little experience, most employers prefer a chronological or hybrid resume format. Whatever resume format you decide to use, be sure that your format remains consistent throughout the document.

Take stock of your achievements and activities

Make a list of absolutely everything you’ve done that might be useful on a resume. From this list, you’ll then need to narrow down what to actually include on your resume. Different things might be relevant to different jobs you apply for, so keep a full list and pick the most relevant things from it to include on your resume when you send it out.

Focus on your education and skills

In lieu of work experience, it’s best to expand and focus on your education and skills you’ve developed on your resume. What can you do well that this job requires? What will be useful to the hiring company? What have you done in school and what have you studied that has prepared you for assuming this job? This is generally a little easier if you’re a college graduate with specialized education, but even a high school graduate can talk about their electives, why they wanted to take them, and what they learned from the class.

Include any extracurricular activities or volunteer work

When surveyed, the majority of employers say that they take volunteer experience into consideration alongside paid work experience. So any volunteer work that highlights your talents or where you learned a new skill should be put on your resume. Only include hobbies if they are relevant to the position and have equipped you with transferable skills that would be useful for the job role.

Internships, internships, internships

Paid and unpaid college internships are one of the best weapons you have against “experience required.” Not only do they give you some real-world work experience, they also allow you to network and make connections that can put you in a job later. When applying for a job without experience, be sure to list any internships you completed. If you haven’t had one, consider applying as a step before an entry-level job.

How to Answer the ‘Why Should We Hire You Questions’

With this question, your interviewer is asking you to sell him on you and your status as the best person for the position. Make his job easier by convincing him that:

• You can do the work and deliver exceptional results
• You will fit in beautifully and be a great addition to the team
• You possess a combination of skills and experience that make you stand out from the crowd
• Hiring you will make him look smart and make his life easier

Common Resume Mistakes

Using an unprofessional email address

Recall in college, high school, or even middle school those people who made fun of you for not being “original” when it came to your email address. Little did they know that, in order to land an interview, it’s helpful to have an email address that speaks to who you are and not to some alter ego of who you’d like to be. You don’t want a recruiter to overlook your glowing qualifications because he or she got hung up on “hipster.hottie” email address.

Spelling and grammatical errors

Editing your resume to eliminate spelling and grammatical errors might seem obvious; the fact that I’m even listing it might make most job applicants roll their eyes. Yet, this resume mistake topped the list of deal-breakers in the survey and was a hot topic among recruiters on Quora who answered the question, “What are the worst resume deal-breakers job seekers should avoid?”

Jonathan Jones, Head of Investment Talent Development at Point72 Asset Management, offers the following resume-writing tip: “Have someone else read over your resume to check for this sort of error. It can be hard to spot when you’re the one who’s written the thing. A second pair of eyes helps.”

In addition, try printing your resume out to review or using a free tool like Grammarly to scan your resume for contextual spelling mistakes that spell check won’t pick up.

Attempting One Size Fits All

Whenever you try to develop a one-size-fits-all resume to send to all employers, you almost always end up with something employers will toss in the recycle bin. Employers want you to write a resume specifically for them. They expect you to clearly show how and why you fit the position in a specific organization.

Repetitive words or phrases used in multiple job descriptions

When a recruiter reads the same words or phrases on a resume, it becomes redundant. It can also come across as if you didn’t care enough to put the effort into using a variation of action-oriented words and being specific for each position listed.

Format and/or design is too elaborate

When it comes to your resume format, less is usually more. Stick to a simple, clean resume design that favors white space and makes it easy for the reader to quickly skim your information and understand your career story. The more elaborate or creative you get with your resume format, the more likely recruiters will be forced to hunt for the information they care about, and the more likely they will skip over your application altogether.

Save the fancy graphs and other bells-and-whistles for your personal website

What do Employers Look for in A Resume

Your success in crafting an appealing resume will depend largely on you knowing what your employers are looking for. The harsh truth is you don’t have much time to impress employers. Hiring managers only care about the value you have to offer as a candidate. Here are a few of them.

Keyword research

First and foremost, employers want to know if you’re qualified for the job. Hiring managers spend most of their time skimming through resumes to identify keywords that match the job description.

Each time you apply for a job, carefully dissect the job posting. Create a list of skills, knowledge, and experience required for the position that matches your experience. After you’ve created a list, identify the strongest matches. These will be the keywords you’ll use throughout your resume.

Format and Label

Ensure your resume is formatted in such a way that the recipient will be able to open it easily – no hiring manager wants to download software to view a resume. Make sure that when you save your resume, you include your name (i.e. Smith, John- resume) in the saved title. It’s also a courtesy to keep your application under 1MB to avoid clogging anyone’s inbox. You may possess all the desired skills and experience to excel at a role, but if you don’t document them clearly in your resume, you may fall at the first hurdle in being considered for a new role.

Easy to Read

Ensure the layout of your resume is clear and consistent, containing only one type of font (bold can be used to highlight). Use bullet points to outline skills, achievements, responsibilities, etc. rather than rambling sentences. Spelling or grammar mistakes are to be avoided at all costs.

Overall career progression

Hiring managers want to read resumes that tell a story about a candidate’s career. This story helps them identify the reason why you’re applying for the position and whether you’d make a good fit.

Make sure your resume outlines the key responsibilities you’ve held in each position and how they’ve contributed to your overall career success. Your job titles should also give the employer an idea of the type of experience you’ve had over time.

Experience

Your resume will be scanned for the right kind of experience. Ensure your experience – whether six months in one role or four years in another – comes across as consistent and relevant to the job you’re applying for. Be clear where you added value and your exact contribution to any high-profile project.

14 Things You Should Never Include In Your Resume

1. Photographs

Unless you’re applying for a position as a model, actor or television news anchor, don’t include a photograph of yourself in your resume. The practice of including a photograph is dated, requires the use of prime resume real estate and simply is not applicable.

2. Salary Information

Not only does this information clutter up a resume, it could eliminate you from consideration if deemed too high or too low for the position you’re seeking. Save salary discussions until the interview. If the job posting asks you to provide an expected salary, include this information in your cover letter. However, if possible, simply write “competitive” or “negotiable” instead of assigning a dollar figure.

3. Your hobbies

Nobody cares.

If it’s not relevant to the job you’re applying for, it’s a waste of space and a waste of the company’s time.

4. Exact Dates

Using exact dates clutters up a resume. Unless you are asked to provide exact dates (usually a feature only seen on online fill-in forms) use months and years. Employment dates expressed in years only is also acceptable and beneficial if you have short gaps in employment.

5. Time off

If you took time off to travel or raise a family, Gelbard doesn’t recommend including that information on your CV. “In some countries, it is acceptable to include this information, especially travel.” However, in places like the US it is highly discouraged.

6. References

If your employers want to speak to your references, they’ll ask you. Also, it’s better if you have a chance to tell your references ahead of time that a future employer might be calling.

If you write “references upon request” at the bottom of your CV, you’re merely wasting a valuable line

7. Anything That Is False

Make your resume as accurate as possible. Inconsistencies between your resume and your interview could cost you a job.

8. A less-than-professional email address

If you still use an old email address, like BeerLover123@gmail.com or CuteChick4life@yahoo.com, it’s time to pick a new one.

It only takes a minute or two, and it’s free.

9. Availability

Save the subject of availability for the interview. Do not include dates of availability on your resume.

10. Your boss’ name

Don’t include your boss’ name on your CV unless you’re OK with your potential employer contacting him or her. Even then, Gelbard says the only reason your boss’ name should be on your CV is if the person is someone noteworthy, and if it would be really impressive.

11. Social-media URLs that are not related to the targeted position

Links to your opinionated blogs, Pinterest page, or Instagram account have no business taking up prime CV real estate. “Candidates who tend to think their personal social media sites are valuable are putting themselves at risk of landing in the ‘no’ pile,” Nicolai says.

“But you should list relevant URLs, such as your LinkedIn page or any others that are professional and directly related to the position you are trying to acquire,” she says.

12. More than 15 years of experience

When you start including jobs from before 2001, you start to lose the hiring manager’s interest.

Your most relevant experience should be from the past 15 years, so hiring managers only need to see that, Augustine says.

On the same note, never include dates on education and certifications that are older than 15 years.

13. Your grades

Once you’re out of school, your grades aren’t so relevant

If they were particularly high, it’s OK to leave it. But, if you’re more than three years out of school, or if your grades weren’t outstanding, ditch it.

14. Short-term employment

Avoid including a job on your CV if you only held the position for a short period of time, Gelbard says. You should especially avoid including jobs you were let go from or didn’t like.

31 Tips That Will Give Your Resume an Edge in the 2021 Job Market

It is said that when you’re on the job hunt, you only have six seconds to hook a recruiter or future employer with your resume. And with the rise of applicant tracking systems, figuring out what to include, what to trash, what to highlight, and what to downplay on your resume is getting even more difficult. 

1. Reach Out on LinkedIn

Don’t be shy: Make a connection with someone at the company over LinkedIn and ask what key skills or qualities they might be looking for in a candidate. This will help you bolster those keywords.

“I actually did this, but didn’t until after a month or two of searching,” said Garcia-Cooper. “It was super helpful to pick someone’s brain who hires people or got hired for a similar job that you would want; they obviously did something right.”

2. Put the Best Stuff “Above the Fold”

In marketing speak, “above the fold” refers to what you see on the front half of a folded newspaper (or, in the digital age, before you scroll down on a website), but basically it’s your first impression of a document. In resume speak, it means you should make sure your best experiences and accomplishments are visible on the top third of your resume. This top section is what the hiring manager is going to see first—and what will serve as a hook for someone to keep on reading. So focus on putting your best, most relevant experiences first

3. But Keep a Master List of All Jobs

Since you’ll want to be swapping different information in and out depending on the job you’re applying to, keep a resume master list on your computer where you keep any information you’ve ever included on a resume: old positions, bullet points tailored for different applications, special projects that only sometimes make sense to include. Then, when you’re crafting each resume, it’s just a matter of cutting and pasting relevant information together.

4. Ditch the Objective Statement

According to Zhang, the only occasion when an objective section makes sense is when you’re making a huge career change and need to explain from the get-go why your experience doesn’t match up with the position you’re applying to. In every other case? Consider whether a summary statement would be right for you—or just nix it altogether to save space and focus on making the rest of your resume stellar.

5. Consider an Online Supplement

Can’t figure out how to tell your whole story on one page, or want to be able to include some visual examples of your work? Instead of trying to have your resume cover everything, cover the most important details on that document, and then include a link to your personal website, where you can dive more into what makes you the ideal candidate.

6. Carefully Stand Out

Really want your resume stand out from the sea of Times New Roman? Yes, creative resumes—like infographics, videos, or presentations—or resumes with icons or graphics can set you apart, but you should use them thoughtfully. If you’re applying through an ATS, keep to the standard formatting without any bells and whistles so the computer can read it effectively.

If you’re applying to a more traditional company, don’t get too crazy, but feel free to add some tasteful design elements or a little color to make it pop. No matter what, don’t do it unless you’re willing to put in the time, creativity, and design work to make it awesome.

7. Keep it Recent, Keep it Relevant

As a rule, you should only show the most recent 10-15 years of your career history and only include the experience relevant to the positions to which you are applying. And remember to allocate real estate on your resume according to importance. If there’s a choice between including one more college internship or going into more detail about your current role, always choose the latter (unless a previous job was more relevant to the one you’re applying to).

8. No Relevant Experience? No Worries

Don’t panic if you don’t have any experience that fits the bill. Instead, Zhang explains, focus your resume on your relevant and transferrable skills along with any related side or academic projects, and then make sure to pair it with a strong cover letter telling the narrative of why you’re ideal for the job.

9. Add Numbers to it

Use as many facts, figures, and numbers as you can in your bullet points. How many people were impacted by your work? By what percentage did you exceed your goals? By quantifying your accomplishments, you really allow the hiring manager to picture the level of work or responsibility you needed to achieve them.

10. Take it One Step Further

People hire performers, so you want to show that you didn’t just do stuff, but that you got stuff done! As you look at your bullet points, think about how you can take each statement one step further and add in what the benefit was to your boss or your company. By doing this, you clearly communicate not only what you’re capable of, but also the direct benefit the employer will receive by hiring you.

11. Show—Don’t Tell—Your Soft Skills

Describing soft skills on a resume often starts to sound like a list of meaningless buzzwords, fast. But being a “strong leader” or an “effective communicator” are important characteristics you want to get across. Think about how you can demonstrate these attributes in your bullet points without actually saying them.

12. Don’t Neglect Non-Traditional Work

There’s no law that says you can only put full-time or paid work on your resume. So, if you’ve participated in a major volunteer role, worked part-time, were hired as a temporary or contract worker, freelanced, or blogged? Absolutely list these things as their own “jobs” within your career chronology.

13. Use Keywords

Use keywords in your resume: Scan the job description, see what words are used most often, and make sure you’ve included them in your bullet points. Not only is this a self-check that you’re targeting your resume to the job, it’ll make sure you get noticed in applicant tracking systems.

14. Avoid Empty Words

What words shouldn’t you include? Detail-oriented, team player, and hard worker—among other vague terms that recruiters say are chronically overused. We bet there’s a better way to describe how awesome you are.

15. Experience First, Education Second

Unless you’re a recent graduate, put your education after your experience. Chances are, your last couple of jobs are more important and relevant to you getting the job than where you went to college.

16. Also Keep it Reverse Chronological

Usually, you should lay down your educational background by listing the most recent or advanced degree first, working in reverse chronological order. But if older coursework is more specific to the job, list that first to grab the reviewer’s attention.

17. Skip the Dates

Don’t list your graduation dates. The reviewer cares more about whether or not you have the degree than when you earned it.

18. Highlight Honors, Not GPA

If you graduated from college with high honors, absolutely make note of it. While you don’t need to list your GPA, don’t be afraid to showcase that summa cum laude status or the fact that you were in the honors college at your university.

19. Include Continuing or Online Education

Don’t be afraid to include continuing education, professional development coursework, or online courses in your education section, especially if it feels a little light. Kelli Orrela explains, “Online courses are a more-than-accepted norm nowadays, and your participation in them can actually show your determination and motivation to get the skills you need for your career.”

20. List Out Your Skills

Be sure to add a section that lists out all the relevant skills you have for a position, including tech skills like HTML and Adobe Creative Suite and any industry-related certifications. Just make sure to skip including skills that everyone is expected to have, like using email or Microsoft Word. Doing so will actually make you seem less technologically savvy.

21. Show Some Personality

Feel free to include an “Interests” section on your resume, but only add those that are relevant to the job. Are you a guitar player with your eye on a music company? Definitely include it. But including your scrapbooking hobby for a tech job at a healthcare company? Don’t even think about it.

22. Beware of Interests That Could Be Controversial

Maybe you help raise money for your church on the reg. Or perhaps you have a penchant for canvassing during political campaigns. Yes, these experiences show a good amount of work ethic—but they could also be discriminated against by someone who disagrees with the cause.

23. Kill the Short-Term Jobs

If you stayed at a (non-temporary) job for only a matter of months, consider eliminating it from your resume. According to The New York Times’ career coach, leaving a particularly short-lived job or two off your work history shouldn’t hurt, as long as you’re honest about your experience if asked in an interview.

24. Deal with the Gaps

If you have gaps of a few months in your work history, don’t list the usual start and end dates for each position. Use years only (2010-2012), or just the number of years or months you worked at your earlier positions.

25. Explain Serial Job Hopping

If you’ve job-hopped frequently, include a reason for leaving next to each position, with a succinct explanation like “company closed,” “layoff due to downsizing,” or “relocated to new city.” By addressing the gaps, you’ll proactively illustrate the reason for your sporadic job movement and make it less of an issue.

26. Explain a Long Break in Jobs

Re-entering the workforce after a long hiatus? This is the perfect opportunity for a summary statement at the top, outlining your best skills and accomplishments. Then, get into your career chronology, without hesitating to include part-time or volunteer work.

27. Don’t Try to Get Cute

Don’t try to creatively fill in gaps on your resume. For example, if you took time out of the workforce to raise kids, don’t list your parenting experience on your resume, à la “adeptly managed the growing pile of laundry” (we’ve seen it). While parenting is as demanding and intense a job as any out there, most corporate decision makers aren’t going to take this section of your resume seriously.

28. Ditch “References Available Upon Request”

If a hiring manager is interested in you, he or she will ask you for references—and will assume that you have them. There’s no need to address the obvious (and doing so might even make you look a little presumptuous!).

29. Proofread, Proofread, Proofread

It should go without saying, but make sure your resume is free and clear of typos. And don’t rely on spell check and grammar check alone—ask family or friends to take a look at it for you

30. Save it as a PDF

If emailing your resume, make sure to always send a PDF rather than a .doc. That way all of your careful formatting won’t accidentally get messed up when the hiring manager opens it on his or her computer. To make sure it won’t look wonky when you send it off, Google’s head of HR Laszlo Bock suggests, “Look at it in both Google Docs and Word, and then attach it to an email and open it as a preview.”

31. Constantly Refresh It

Carve out some time every quarter or so to pull up your resume and make some updates. Have you taken on new responsibilities? Learned new skills? Add them in. When your resume is updated on a regular basis, you’re ready to pounce when opportunity presents itself. And, even if you’re not job searching, there are plenty of good reasons to keep this document in tip-top shape.

Conclusion

Your resume is the most important document you’ll submit in your job search. It’s your front-line fighter, so to speak, as it’s your first opportunity to present yourself to a potential employer. 

A strong resume can help you stand out from the crowd, but a weak resume can remove you from the running, so you want to do all you can to make sure your resume is the best it can be.

After all, hiring managers and recruiters generally only spend about 7 seconds reading your resume before deciding whether to move forward or not. Most people know the basics of how to put together a decent work history, but these few tips mentioned above can help your resume stand up to the 7-second test. They will also help you succeed in the job market in 2021.