This content provides practical resume writing tips from a recruiter's perspective, emphasizing clarity, conciseness, and ATS compatibility to help job seekers land more interviews.
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As a recruiter and a career coach, I
look at a lot of résumés and I do a lot
of résumé reviews. And one thing is
perfectly clear. Some of y'all need some
help. And in this video, I'm going to
share some rum writing tips that will
Hey everybody, it's Brian from Life
After Layoff and today I want to share
with you some rumé writing tips so that
you can put your best foot forward and
hopefully start landing more job
interviews. Now I want to preface this
by stating that there's no singular
right way to write a resume. There's
lots of different approaches and a lot
of them are very valid and the litmus
test here is is your resume getting the
results that you want? If it is then
stick with what works best for you. My
approach comes from a corporate
recruiter's perspective, how I screen
and look at résumés very quickly. We
usually give you a five-second glance,
but also how hiring managers have given
me feedback on how they screen resumes
themselves. And so the feedback and the
tips that I teach are from that
perspective. But I'm not saying that my
way is the only way that you can
approach it. However, I do want to give
you some tips that can help you improve
your presentation because ultimately you
have a very short amount of time to
capture the attention of the person who
is screening the resume and making sure
ours is the one that gets called for
that first round interview. And I also
want to point out that the tips that I'm
sharing today come directly from my
resume rocket course, which teaches you
exactly how to write a resume from a
recruiter's perspective. So, if you need
a little bit more assistance in
developing and crafting the right resume
for you, you may want to consider that
option. So, the first thing we want to
do is stop using outdated templates
designed by graphic designers. I see
these templates very frequently on
places like canva.com, but also a lot of
these big industry réé hubs where you
can go in, pay some money to download a
resume that has a bunch of graphics,
charts, a bunch of cute presentation.
And those are generally a bad idea
because they end up distracting from the
initial purpose, which is for us to find
what it is that we're looking for in a
very quick and concise manner. So,
honestly, I just recommend going on to
Microsoft Word, downloading a very
simple template, and working with that.
If you want a battle tested recruiter
approved RSé template, I also provide
one with RSé rocket fuel, and I've also
made it available as a standalone. So,
you can find that on my website. When
you're choosing a template, go with one
that has one column. Avoid any of the
bright and flashy colors and graphics.
Make sure that the fonts are very clean
and easy to read. I would stick the
basic colors, maybe blue, blacks, dark
green, etc. But I wouldn't go very
flashy here. For most of us, a resume
should be relatively boring in that
regard. The only exception here is if
you're a graphic designer or somebody in
a creative field where you might want to
opt for a more creative approach to your
resume because that's probably expected
in that role. But if you're a graphic
designer, you probably don't want to be
using a template designed by another
graphic designer is probably not the
best look for you. And the reason why
templates designed by graphic designers
often aren't very effective is because
they're designed by people who don't
know how applicant tracking systems work
and how they parse résumés. To that end,
here's another tip. Stop making your
contact information horizontal. You want
to make it vertical because the ATS
systems typically do not read horizontal
and parse it very well. You want to go
vertical because it finds the
information more cleanly and puts it
into the right fields. And here's a
little litmus test there. If you find
when you're applying for jobs that the
applicant tracking system is not parsing
your name, your phone number, your
address, things like that in a clean and
concise way and you have to do a lot of
manual data entry, you probably don't
have an ATS compliant resume. Now, your
contact information isn't the reason why
you aren't going to get contacted in
most cases, but it's just a little
quality of life hack if you want to
speed up your applications. The next
thing I would implore you to do is to
stop writing your resume as a summary of
everything that you've ever accomplished
in your career. Start thinking about
profiling. And I know that we look at
profiling with a negative context. But
the idea of profiling here is that
instead of summarizing and hoping that
the employer sees something that they
like that we're profiling for a specific
role and we're delivering exactly what
the employer is looking for. It's a much
more effective approach to writing
résumés. So stop focusing on all the
stuff that you've accomplished in your
career that probably isn't relevant to
the hiring teams and start focusing on
what it is that they actually care
about. The next thing is is going to be
something that's going to trigger some
people, but it's to stop being so lazy
about your customization. Customization
of your resume is a very crucially
important step, especially in today's
job market and in particular those
coveted remote roles because you may be
looking for them, but so is everybody
else. And the competition is fierce. So
you have to do something to stand out.
And customizing, while it might seem
uncomfortable, is something that you
will have to get in the habit of doing.
You can't keep on approaching your job
search like it's 2018. The market is
completely different today. And listen,
because everybody else is going to be
lazy and not customize their resume,
this is your opportunity to use that as
a competitive advantage and get that
edge to get the phone call while they're
all waiting and wondering why they're
getting rejected. And while you're at
it, stop being so damn wordy with your
resumes. Some of the résumés that I see
are blocks of text that are so long that
your eyes just start to glaze over as
you're trying to scan through it. Think
of when you go onto a forum or a
Facebook post or something and people
leave a huge block of text in a comment.
How many of you actually get through it
and read it? Whereas, when people format
it and make it look nice and concise and
short, it's much more easy to scan.
Recruiters and hiring managers are
probably going to skip over your resume
if you hit them with a massive block of
text. So, try to be more concise. Try to
be very selective with the words that
you choose and how it lays out on the
page. And one way you can get rid of
some of these extra words is to stop
using proprietary language that the only
people who know what it is are you and
maybe your boss and your current
co-workers. Often times we feel the need
to put in all this proprietary
information, titles, project names,
division names, product types, etc. that
are only unique and only known by the
company that you work for. Everybody
else in the open market has no clue what
they are. And you're spending all this
time trying to basically word salad your
way into I don't know if it's to try to
impress us or what it is, but you want
to try to be concise here. So, I always
recommend to try to boil down the
concepts that you're trying to convey in
as clear a language in as common a
language as possible for the industry
that you're applying to. Another thing
that you can do to try to declutter your
resume is to remove the generic fluffy
terminology. This stuff makes just about
every recruiter and hiring manager roll
their eyes when you say things like,
"I'm a team player," or, "I have great
organizational skills." Because listen,
if that's a really important competency
to the hiring teams, we're going to
assess that in an interview anyway. Your
resume is probably not going to show it
in a way that we would need to to assess
your fit. Instead, I would focus on more
actionable terms and concepts in your
resume as they relate to the job that
you're doing. Because again, the goal
here is not to have the most words on
your resume or try to impress people
with an elaborate vocabulary. It's to
convey a clear and concise fit for the
job that you're applying to with again
the end goal of trying to get your name
called so that you can get into the
interview process. And the final tip
that I'd like to convey in this video is
to stop being so stubborn. If your
resume isn't working, redo it. But as
the saying goes, doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting a
different result is the definition of
insanity. But if you're getting
frustrated in your job search and you're
getting rejected repeatedly at the
application level, something tells me
that your resume is not working for you.
And this is especially true if you're
somebody that has a very clear fit for
the job that you're applying to. And I
would be remiss without saying that we
probably need to be realistic here about
our fit for the jobs that we're applying
to. While we may feel we're a good fit,
we have to take a very close look at the
job posting and say, "Do I truly stack
up?" Because when they have a thousand
other candidates, they probably are. So,
make sure that your resume is clearly
conveying the fit so that you can give
yourself the best chance of getting into
that interview process. Anyway,
hopefully you found these tips to be
helpful the next time you're writing a
resume. And remember, plan, do, check,
and adjust. If your resume is not
getting you the results that you want,
make some changes, mix it up a little
bit, try a different version. If you're
still having some struggles, I highly
encourage you to check out Ré Rocket
Fuel. Anyway, happy job hunting.
Appreciate you watching. We'll see you
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