Are You Making This Major Mistake With Your Resume?!

Job hunting is hard. It can be discouraging, and you might feel like you’re putting out a hundred resumes a day just to get rejection letters.

Setting yourself apart from your competition is what is going to make a difference for you! But how do you do that? Well, the first thing that you are giving your potential new employers is your resume. It’s your shining star, the piece of paper (or let’s be honest, the file) that has everything about you neatly organized.

Are you doing everything you can with your resume to show off your skills??

You Should Be Personalizing Each and Every Resume You Send Out

If you’re not personalizing your resume to a job listing, you’re doing it all wrong!

Your resume is the first look your potential employer has at your skills, and at a glance, they need to know why you are perfect for this role. A stock, standard, boring resume is going to go into the pile with all of the others, even if you really are the best candidate.

So How To Personalize?

Great question! How do you ensure that you’re putting enough personalization into each resume you send out?

First of all, scan through the job listing and write down the most important parts. Are they looking for a manager for a small team? Write down leadership and authority. Looking for a specific skill set? Write that skillset down. Looking for someone who is an expert in a subfield? Write it down!

Now, look at your list. What of these are you most qualified for? Where do you shine? Maybe you’re not an expert in field A, but you have management experience and worked extensively in field B, what they are also looking for.

Take your resume and move your skills around so what the company is looking for you have listed front and center. Your knowledge, expertise, and all-important info they need is right there to read at a glance.

Your potential future employer should never have to dig through your resume to find why you’re a great fit. You need to lead them to you, and this is the first step.

Where Should My Focus Be?

Research has suggested that recruiters only look at a resume for a few seconds, and most only skim and retain information from the top third of the first page. That’s a very small section of your resume!

Make sure that everything you have noted, all of your relevant qualifications for the job, are in the top third of your resume. The rest is important, yes – but the first bit is going to get them to keep reading to learn more about you.

This is a LOT of Work…

Yes, it is. But you know what else is? Work! Treat your job hunt like your job, and give everything the proper time and attention.

If you put out 100 resumes in a week, that’s great. How many recruiters are going to notice it’s a canned response, or how many calls are you going to get for jobs you don’t want, don’t pay enough, or aren’t in your field?

10 well written, personalized resumes to jobs you actually want are worth 100x more than 100 thrown around resumes that won’t land you the job of your dreams. Finding a job isn’t a numbers game, not always – quality matters, too.