How To Write the Perfect Resume: 10 Steps
Having a Perfect Resume is Imperitive
The key to getting an interview for our dream role, or any role, is that one piece of paper -- your resume. Especially now when computers and online systems are screening resumes even before human resources, it's imperative to write your resume in a clear and concise way for technology to push us through to land that interview. Additionally, hiring managers only look at resumes for an average of 6 seconds -- that's basically no time! So you need to ensure your resume is streamlined enough to make you look like an ideal candidate within just a few seconds.
Knowing exactly what to write and how to write it can be a struggle, so these 10 tips will take the guess-work out of the process and help you create the perfect resume to submit to all your upcoming applications. These tips are helpful for anyone; whether you're trying to write a resume with no or minimal experience, or if you're a seasoned professional wanting to streamline your experience into a perfect resume.
I’ve Been There…
I personally have learned and refined my resume writing skills over the last 9 years and want to bring you the knowledge and insight that has landed me my dream job. Regardless of the industry, the tips are all the same.
If you're to get personalized feedback on your current resume to ensure it's up to standards in today's job market, look here.
If you're looking for resume templates for a strong place to start in creating that perfect resume, look here.
What You’ll Find
Below, find the 10 tips that will help you write the perfect resume. You want to ensure you follow all these tips so your resume looks clean, professional, and actually tells the interviewer and/or reviewer what you're trying to get across. Hiring managers are literally judging you based on this piece of paper, so you want to make sure you follow these tips to stand out as a strong candidate and to get that interview invitation.
How to Write the Perfect Resume in 10 Steps
Put Important Contact Information at the Top
These include your name, phone number, professional email address, and LinkedIn URL. This one might sound blatantly obvious, but trust me, I've seen resumes that either have this critical information at the bottom or don't have it included at all. If you actually want a call from the interviewer, you're going to have to let them know how to contact you.
You might be thinking why an address isn't on the list. In today's world, many jobs are remote and many roles can be done online. Wasting precious space on your resume for your address isn't necessary anymore, and if the job requires it, they'll ask you for your location or address. The only time it may be a good idea to include your address would be if it will help your application and if the role you're applying for needs you to be in a certain location.
Have an 'Objective' Section Near the Top of your Resume
Although expert advice is split on having an objective versus not, generally if you're applying for a specific role or if you don't have much experience, it's a good idea to include it. This can really help streamline your interviewers’ thoughts and direct them to exactly what your intent is in your career, what experience and skills you bring to the table, and how they can help you. It's a way to spoon-feed them the information you're looking for. If they don't read past this section, they will have a good idea of who you are and what you do and can decide to move forward simply based on that.
Keep it to 1 Page
Expert advice on resume length is that it should reflect your years of experience. Moreover, experts say that in your 20s, your resume should never exceed 1 page. It can be difficult to streamline all the information you want to just one simple page, but it's in your best interest to do so. If not, you might come across as arrogant, over-confident, or full of yourself just sheerly through the length of your resume.
Remove Outdated Information
If your high school or early professional years of experience are still on your resume, you should probably remove them. You want to have enough work experience information to show that you have worked for a good amount of time, but showing irrelevant and outdated information can cloud the hiring manager's judgment. There's no guarantee that your work experience from 6-10 years ago reflects how you are as a professional today. This outdated information is just taking up precious space on your resume and won't even help your application as a whole.
Omit any Irrelevant Information
I can't stress this point enough. This is the one piece of advice that absolutely transformed my own resume and actually started getting me interviews at companies I looked up to.
If a hiring manager has to sift through the fluff to get to the relevant information, they'll give up on you within a few seconds of reviewing your resume. Make it easy for them. Spoon feed them the information they're looking for front and center and the best way to do this is to remove any information that won't be providing value to your whole application. Showing you have various experiences and years of experience can be helpful, but you want to be careful to not be redundant and again, provide information that's just not valuable. Remove yourself from your own resume, don't have attachments to your experiences, and remove what is objectively irrelevant and then sit back and watch those interview invitations roll in!
Add Metrics
In the description of each work experience, make sure to add numerical metrics to show the impact you had. This directly translates to value you can bring to any company you're applying to and that is the key information all hiring managers are looking for. So again, directly give them this information to land a spot in the interview. At the end of the day, each company is a business and every objective outcome to the company's success is a metric, so speak their language and have that on your resume to show the value you bring to the table.
Use the RIGHT Keywords
To beat the computerized resume screening system, we all know to include keywords on our resume and application materials, but including the RIGHT keywords is what matters. If you just fill your resume with any possibly relevant keyword you find, the hiring manager will see this as 'keyword stuffing' and they probably won't extend an interview. Look through the job description and pull the keywords that are relevant, but again, don't go crazy. This way, you're hitting the nail on the head by including what they're looking for, but only in a normal, consumable fashion. This comes across as professional and you're showing the hiring manager you have all the skills they're looking for.
Write in Reverse Chronological Order
Through the FocusRx personalized resume review service, I've noticed many individuals don't understand how to present work experiences or any information on a resume in regard to the date. You should always write in reverse chronological order, with the most recent experience, event, presentation, etc. first, and then go backward from there. Basically, as the hiring manager reads through your resume, they should get a clear idea of what you're involved with right now, what you did right before that, what you did before that, and so on.
This also helps your application as a whole because it shows you know how to present complicated information and that you're organized -- all skills hiring managers are looking for.
Don't Include References on your Resume
First off, this will take up space on that precious one page and it's just not necessary. If the recruiter or hiring manager is looking for references, they won't be shy to directly ask you. If it's a part of the hiring process, usually you'll be asked to include references. So, provide this information when necessary as it probably won't be utilized straight from your resume.
Second, you may want to change which references you provide based on how the interview process proceeds or based on each individual application. Having universally-available references might not be the most strategic move to really help you get that job offer.
Get Someone to Review your Resume
We are all too close to our resumes because we're the ones who have actually gone through the work experiences listed and in our minds, it's very clear what we did and what impact we had. This clouds our own judgement and sometimes we're unable to see past what's simply on the paper. We add our own background knowledge to it.
To really understand if your resume is effective, getting third-party advice on your resume is super helpful. You can utilize the FocusRx Resume Writing Review Service to get personalized feedback, or as other professionals in your network. Honestly, the more people that look at it and provide you feedback, the better. You can always sift through the feedback and decide to implement some points while disregarding others, but at least you have feedback to deal with. It's better than having no feedback at all.
Now Write Your Perfect Resume!
Overall, these 10 tips to writing the perfect resume should help you streamline the information on your precious 1 page and will give you a better chance at all those roles you're applying to. Resume writing is a skill so the more you work at it and the more you implement the tips above, the better chance you have at getting an actual human to look at your resume and of course, ultimately a better chance at securing a job offer.
Again, if you're looking for personalized comments on your resume or for resume templates for a strong foundation, do check out FocusRx Resources.
As always, hopefully, this information is helpful for you in creating that perfect resume -- bye for now!