As remote work becomes more accepted, job opportunities are more competitive, and it is more important now than ever to learn the basics of how to sell yourself on your resume. So, how can you write a resume that makes you stand out?
The goal of a well-written resume is to sell yourself to put your application atop the pile and inspire those reading it to call you back for a follow-up interview.
According to stats from the Undercover Recruiter, recruiters and HR managers spend just 3-minutes reading a resume and have reported that they’ll often decide on that candidate in the first minute of reading their resume.
Consequently, if you can communicate not only what you do, but why you’re passionate about doing it, you’re significantly more likely to attract the attention of recruiters that are looking to employ like-minded and passionate people.
Whether you’re looking to improve your resume, or learning how to pick your best candidate. Here’s our Winning Formula for Recruitment.
Start by covering these topics on your resume, and remove the non-relevant details second.
- Name and contact details
- Career objective
- Qualifications
- Skills summary (soft and technical)
- Professional experience
- Achievements
- Extracurricular activities
- Interests/hobbies
- References
Best Practice Recruitment – Helping to Hire Great Talent
The basic principle of good resume formatting and design is to keep it simple. Use a basic but modern font, like Helvetica, Arial, or Roboto. Make your resume easy on hiring managers’ eyes or a robotic screening software by using a font size between 10-12pt and leaving a healthy amount of white space on the page.
Follow a reverse-chronological order when it comes to your experience. Placing your current or most recent role first, then on to your previous jobs.
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 (even if that means you don’t include all of your experience).
Focus on highlighting your responsibilities in a job by detailing your most impressive accomplishments. For example:
- Instead of “expanded operations to international markets,” say “expanded operations to eight new countries in Latin America.”
- Instead of “led marketing and sales team,” say “supervised marketing and sales team and achieved 15% annual growth vs. 0.5% budget.”
Use as many facts, figures, and numbers as you can in your bullet points. By quantifying your accomplishments, you allow the hiring manager to picture the level of work or responsibility you needed to achieve them.
Proofread, Proofread, Proofread. Make sure your resume is grammatically correct and free of any typos. Grammarly is a free service that will help you double-check your resume. (www.grammarly.com/)
Finally, ensure you save your resume as a PDF. This will keep the formatting of the document design in check and allow for a smaller file. Additionally, title the document with your name rather than just ‘resume.’ Eg: John_Smith_Resume. This will assist the recruiter and show your attention to detail and organisation skills.
