Crafting a resume that opens doors to new opportunities involves more than just listing your experiences; it requires strategic presentation and content that resonate with recruiters and hiring managers. Here's how to update and optimize your resume, infusing it with the latest trends and best practices to stand out in the 2024 job market:
Professional Format: Start with a clean, professional format. Use simple, legible fonts like Calibri or Arial and organize your content with clear headings and consistent spacing. Avoid graphics and heavy use of color to ensure compatibility with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
Resume Title: When you consider the average hiring manager typically takes about 6 seconds to scan a resume, make those first few seconds count! Your resume title should capture what your overall experience is. Include a clear, informative title that reflects your career focus. If transitioning to a new field, a hybrid title that bridges your past experience and target role can be effective.
Power Statement: Value statement, power statement, summary of qualifications – whatever you want to call it, you need it. A brief summary of what you bring to the table – relevant soft and hard skills, years of experience and an overview of your achievements. It’s a lot to convey in a paragraph but it’s what hiring managers will read first and can be what keeps them reading. Also – never write a resume in the first person.
Career Summary: A career summary is vital on a resume as it serves as the initial pitch to employers, summarizing your professional experience, skills, and goals in a few impactful sentences. It allows you to tailor your resume to align with the job's requirements, emphasizing key strengths and career achievements that are relevant to the position. This section also enhances the resume's visibility in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) through strategic use of keywords, thereby improving your chances of catching a hiring manager's attention right from the start.
Example of a Career Summary:
"Dynamic marketing professional with over 10 years of experience in digital advertising and brand management. Proven track record of boosting online visibility and enhancing engagement through strategic SEO and content marketing initiatives, achieving up to a 50% increase in organic traffic for clients. Skilled in team leadership and project management, eager to bring expertise to a forward-thinking company focused on innovative digital solutions."
Table of Skills: Including a table of skills in your resume is crucial as it provides a clear and organized visual snapshot of your capabilities, making it easy for hiring managers to quickly assess your qualifications relative to the job requirements. A skills table enhances the readability of your resume, allowing you to neatly categorize and list your technical and soft skills, which helps in aligning with the keywords that Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) scan for.
To create an effective skills table, simply categorize your skills into relevant groups such as 'Technical Skills' and 'Soft Skills', and list them in a two-column format, ensuring you include those most pertinent to the job description. Example:
Technical Skills | Soft Skills |
- Data Analytics | - Critical Thinking |
- Software Development (Python, Java) | - Team Leadership |
- Network Security | - Effective Communication |
- Machine Learning | - Adaptability |
Relevant Experience: Starting with the most recent to no more than 15 years prior. Including experience older than that is not recommended. Hiring managers aren’t interested in your job at Arby’s right out of high school. Unless, of course, you’re applying at Arby’s. For older experience that is relevant to the role you’re seeking, you can include details in an “Additional Experience” section without dates that, well – date you. ATS systems have been known to toss out resumes with very old work experience. So, be strategic in how you list it out on your resume to maximize the impact.
Education, Certifications, Professional Affiliations – List any degrees you’ve earned but in the same way older work experience can date you, a degree you earned in 1973 can do the same. It’s the result that matters, so unless you just graduated within the last 4-5 years, the dates are not necessary. Be sure to include any technical training, skills or certifications you’ve acquired, as well as professional affiliations.
And by professional affiliations, we mean just that. If you’re an engineer and belong to ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers), be sure to include it on your resume. However, personal interests and hobbies shouldn’t be included on a resume. LinkedIn is a better platform to share that type of information. But be mindful of oversharing, even on LinkedIn.
When it comes to writing your own resume, a lot of folks would likely agree with Ernest Hemingway’s assessment of writing – “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Yep. Writing is hard. And let’s face it, there are few writing assignments in your life that will be more important than this one. Your resume can be a key that unlocks the doors to unlimited opportunities or - the key that doesn’t seem to fit in any of the doors you’re trying to unlock.
But it doesn’t have to be all pain and anguish. After all, there’s no question that a well-crafted, professional resume is a powerful tool for landing your dream job. So, investing in the services of a professional is really investing in you and your future! Contact us today at info@fivestarresumeservice.com for a free resume review and start your building your personal brand today!
