Getting turned down over a resume that you wrote taking hours off your invaluable time must be distressing, causing a collapse in your assertiveness and self-confidence.Leading to a fear of applying into any job further. Whether you are an undergrad student, a recent graduate or a professional looking for a change in your workplace, inclusion of some crucial points in your resume is capable of landing you to your most desired job.
Integrating important keywords
A survey shows that 64% of hiring managers spend a total of 3-6 minutes scanning a resume. Furthermore, resumes now mostly go through applicant tracking systems to filter out low potential candidates. To win this phase, you need to include the skills that your job description requires. Research shows, an average job description requires 43 keywords, while candidates tend to include only 20 of them. That ultimately filters out their resume as ineffectual. Fetch out the necessary hard skills and soft skills that your job requires, include those in your resume in a natural way. For instance, if you are looking for a job as a full time creative content writer, go to the job description, point out the words appearing the most like, content management, great command over sentence structure and leadership qualities, include those in your skills category or experience.
Add metrics
Integration of keywords will not alone push you up the ladder, instead adding valuable metrics will help the one going through your resume compare your worth with other candidates. For example, instead of writing “My articles were published in renowned newspapers”, write, “ 4 of my articles related to the education system were published in renowned newspapers”. If you are applying for any social welfare organization, instead of mentioning “ I worked for underprivileged people in a certain region”, write, “ A total of 200 underprivileged people have a better living in a certain region due to my last project.”
Include relevant skills
In most cases, applicants are seen to include skills that are not required for the job, hence consuming a whole lot of time of the hiring manager in scanning through the resume. Which ultimately leaves a negative impression causing rejection. Moreover, resumes must be revised before applying to every other job depending on requirements of the job. It’s better to avoid adding your school grades, experiences that do not add up to the position you are applying for.
Correct grammar and punctuation
Although, in consideration to your immense experience and skills, looking up for grammatical errors and incorrect punctuation seems a bit off at first. But first impressions really do matter, and it shows how dedicated you were in building up this resume. Make use of grammarly if necessary to ensure proper articulation of your experiences using the correct grammar. Moreover, emphasize on placing hyphens, commas and semicolons at the right places.
Stand apart by including a trial work
Now most of the time, candidates just casually drop their experience and skills that do not show much of a value or interest. What can make you snatch the spotlight from among thousands of applicants is by attaching a great trial work that you have done aiming specifically to that job. For instance, if you want to apply as a journalist to a well known newspaper, write a report for that specific section of the newspaper for which you want to apply, give it your all and make it look like an actual news report that would grab people’s attention when they grab the newspaper as the first thing in the morning.
**Bonus tips
Attach your linkedin profile that shows all your works, achievements and awards. That helps the hiring officers to navigate and analyze your value real quick.
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Writer
Alima Zaim
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE