How to Improve Your Resume

Sometimes you are just unlucky in your job search. Sometimes it feels like you may as well send your resume straight to your email recycle bin, because your efforts for getting a job are having no effect. But, you have to understand that luck does play a very large role in getting a new job. Sometimes your resume is not even read because the employer has chosen another. Sometimes the employer is looking for something you are not offering, and sometimes jobs are only posted online because it is a corporate rule that they “attempt” to gain an outsider, when in fact they already have a person in mind. Nevertheless, if you are fishing it never hurts to change your bait every now and again.

#1: Your objectives should be seen first

Your objectives section should be the first big section (after your name, contact details, etc). You should come up with three objectives and they should be in bullet point form with white space in between them. They should be succinct, concise and powerful. They need to match the employer’s feelings without putting them off in any way.

They must be plausible without being too self-serving. If you write that you need a new job to help you better/serve society then it sounds implausible. If you say you need a new job so that you can move out of your aunties basement then it is too self-serving. Try something like, “My current job is very restrictive, and I can add a lot more than my current role allows”.

#2: Match your skills section to the applied job

It is imperative that every time you send a resume, that it is specifically tailored to the company and the job that you are aiming to get. Your skills section is one of the places where this tailoring is most important. You will need to remove the skills that do not apply to the job, and put the ones that do at the top of your skills list. You may have worked multiple jobs, and will have a variety of skills. It is not acceptable to put the skills from all your jobs in your skills section. For example if you are looking to work in a hospital then your skills at cleaning the pipes in a pub are not needed, but the health and safety qualification you took in order to clean the pumps and handle food should be included.

Make sure that the skills you have written are almost in bulleted form, where the employer can skim read over them and pick out the ones that interest him/her. Under which they may read a short description of the skill and maybe how you got it.

#3: Edit your qualifications section to suit

Again, you will need to edit your qualifications section in the same way that you edit your skills section. The qualifications needed for the job should be highlighted and easy to find. You can also go a step further to make your qualifications more appealing. If you only have a few qualifications then you can add a short note to each one, telling the employer what the qualification has taught you and how you use it. If you have a lot of qualifications, then listing them with few details is preferable. A page full of qualifications is the most that is needed; for some this may involve missing a few details and cramping up the text to fit.

#4: Make your experience section overflow with optimism

After each job put a small description of why you left the job, but keep it very positive (but plausible). Do not say that you left because of a personality clash with the boss, say that your department was being dissolved and you did not like the prospect of working in a different company area. Do not say that you left because another company offered you more money, say that you were woefully underutilized and that your next job offered you more responsibility and better career prospects.

About the Author!

This guest post was contributed by Alice. She works as a freelance writer and regularly contributes paper writing service reviews online.