Get Your Resume Noticed in 20 SeconDs

Chances are, you’ve dedicated countless hours to perfecting your resume, poring over diction, and polishing your skills with a fine-toothed comb. However, despite your meticulous efforts, you soon discover that when it comes to the actual interview, hiring managers typically spend only mere seconds glancing over your hard work before tossing it aside with a dismissive air. Feeling like you’ve put in so much effort for negligible gain can leave you disheartened, but there are numerous ways you can make sure that your resume catches the interest of recruiters and hiring managers alike.

Here are a few techniques that can set your resume apart from the rest of the stack and make it stand out:

1. Use Keywords: Generate a list of words that are relevant to your specific field, peruse job listings to uncover the most prominent ones, and then work them into your descriptions of your work experience in short but impactful sentences.
2. Incorporate Action Verbs: Start each sentence with power verbs like “established,” “planned,” “created,” “directed,” or “organized” to create a clearer picture of what you’ve accomplished and to capture the attention of hiring managers in a mere glance.
3. Keep it Brief: Employers are typically only interested in viewing the work you’ve done within the past four to seven years, regardless of the level position you’re in. To ensure that your resume isn’t too verbose or cluttered with irrelevant details, use concise language to describe your achievements, discarding anything that seems unrelated to the job you’re applying for.
4. Target Resumes: Your resume should always cater to the specific job you are applying for instead of a broad, generalized approach. Take the time to customize your resumes for each desired position and consider having multiple resumes if you’re applying for an array of positions.
5. Highlight Achievements: More than just providing a list of your duties or responsibilities, emphasize details of your accomplishments, such as how much money you earned, time or dollars saved, to illustrate to hiring managers just how impactful you’ve been in your past work opportunities. Use numerical data to give concrete evidence of what you’ve achieved.

By taking the time to incorporate these techniques into your resume, you can demonstrate to recruiters and hiring managers that you’ve got what it takes to deliver top-notch performance for their organization. Good luck!