Trying to get a new job can be a hugely frustrating process, especially if you are stuck at the stage where you are spending hours writing resumes, sending them off and hearing nothing back. Sometimes this can be because there’s so much competition out there for the best jobs but too often it’s because your resume just isn’t good enough, even if your experience and skills are.
To help you avoid falling into this trap, Resume.io has come up with top tips for writing resumes. Using these tips will give you the advantage that will help your application end up on the top of the right pile rather than the bottom of the shredder. They cover all aspects of a great resume, starting with something as simple as using the right font size. It’s 10 or 12, by the way.
White space is also important on a resume, much as you might think it’s crucial to squeeze as much information into it as possible. Instead you need to make it skimmable so that a hiring manager can easily pick out the information that they’re looking for. Another way to help with this is to align your text to the left of the page.
Of course, there’s a good chance your resume might not ever even get to be read by a human being, with 75% of them being filtered out by Applicant Tracking Systems in the US. So you’re not just optimizing for humans, you need to make it easier for the machines to see how great you are too, which makes using online resume builders a better bet than building your own in Word.
An ATS needs to use keywords to identify whether you fit the criteria, so it’s only common sense to give it what it wants. You can find these words and phrases on the job listing, so be sure to use them. You can also help by using common fonts like Arial, Calibri and Times New Roman. Perhaps steer clear of Comic Sans though.
These tips give you the tools you need to construct the perfect resume and give it the best shot at getting past the digital gatekeepers. So before you next apply for a job, check out the rest of the advice in this guide and see how many more interviews you get booked in.
