1. Keep it concise
One or two page resumes for corporate jobs will be enough.
Shorter resume means that important information is easy to find. Realistically, recruiters and hiring managers quickly scan through your resume, focus on your recent experience and tend to not even look at the second or third page.
If you feel strongly about a longer resume, make sure that everything you add on there is valuable information about you.
2. Use bullet points
Every experience you list on your resume should include bullet points, rather than paragraphs. Realistically, no one is going to read an essay of a resume.
You want to make it easy for the recruiter and hiring manager to find key information. They will skim through your resume so having your experience organized in bullet points form is key.
3. Focus on relevant experience
It’s quite common to change industries and careers in the corporate world. As a result, some of the experiences on your resume might not necessarily be relevant to the job you’re targeting today.
It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t include those roles at all. Instead, focus on parts of those jobs that would be important to the role you’re applying for now.
4. Mirror job description’s language
Your goal is to show the hiring manager that you have the relevant experience required for the job you’re applying for – and make it easy for them to find it.
Read the job description carefully and make sure to use similar language in your resume. If you have experience in that, make it your bullet point.
5. Use power verbs
Start your resume bullet points with power verbs. These are action verbs that help you highlight the value you created in each role you had.
Think verbs like manage, lead, create, grow, initiate, increase, reduce, develop.
6. List achievements, not responsibilities
You resume should list your achievements, not responsibilities.
A list of your responsibilities and a simple ‘responsible for’ or ‘took care of ’ don’t tell the hiring manager whether you were good or bad at your job – it’s just something you did.
Instead, show the employer that you’ve excelled at those responsibilities. Your goal is to highlight all the amazing things you’ve achieved in each of your roles.
7. Quantify your experience
The best way to highlight your achievements is to quantify them. Aim to have numbers in every (or most) bullet point you have.
Think dollars, percentages, months, years, etc.
8. Make it easy to understand
Use simple sentence structure and avoid using vocabulary and abbreviations that are specific to a particular company you worked for.
You can try giving your resume to a friend or a family member to read, someone who is not your colleague and doesn’t know much about your experience.
9. Be honest
While I encourage you to focus your results, I urge you to include the successes you actually achieved. A lie on your resume will always become evident, at one point or the other.
It’s also important to be transparent about the dates of your employment.
10. Proofread and check formatting
Hiring managers skim through resumes, they don’t really read them. However, what always stands out, even if someone is just giving a resume a quick glance, is spelling errors and sloppy formatting.
So, Spend extra time spell-checking your resume.
By following these simple 10 hacks you can land your first interview sooner than you may imagine.
