Assuming your resume will be skimmed is a good bet. You typically have about 10 to 20 seconds to impress a hiring manager or recruiter. Whether it’s in a towering stack or a stuffed email box, your resume will likely be one out of 100s. The need to stand out is pretty dire if you want to land an interview. So how do you make an impact quickly? Once you’ve ensured your resume is clutter free, has an easy-to-read font, is devoid of grammatical errors, and concisely chronicles your skills and experience, here are the top three ways to make your resume stand out from the crowd:
Back Up Claims On Your Resume With Numbers
It’s one thing to say you improved your department’s bottom line. It’s another to show it. Providing evidence for your triumphs by quantifying them will go a long way in dazzling recruiters and hiring managers. Use percentages, numbers and dollar amounts to show the state of things before you started a project and what the results were after.
Did you reduce expenses or increase sales volume? Say so. You can also use numbers to show the magnitude of responsibilities you had in your role such as the number of employees you managed or the number of clients you were responsible for.
Write Your Resume Like a True Salesman
The main purpose of your resume is to sell yourself. You should write it like it’s ad copy. Put words in bold to attract the eye to the grand slams in your career. Don’t be afraid to boast your accomplishments. Including a category for honors and awards might help with this. Foreground the most important and compelling information at the top of your resume and in the beginning of each job description.
You want the benefits of hiring you and your proven successes to be quick and easy to grasp. Use lots of verbs such as “increased” or “implemented” to show how you took action and solved problems. Keep your resume succinct. You don’t have to limit it to one page, but don’t exceed two pages.
Match Your Resume to the Job Using Keywords
If they’re not manually scanning for keywords, a lot of hiring managers and recruiters use software filters to sift through countless resumes and weed out the ones that don’t match up to the job description and desired skill set. To figure out what keywords are beneficial to include so your resume matches up, study the words in the job description and then research similar job ads to identify a pattern of requirements and keywords. Adjust your resume accordingly.
It may seem like quite a feat to stand out in a competitive job market, but it’s possible. Just a few savvy adjustments can make the difference between being lost in a sea of resumes and soaring to the top.
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