6 Smart Resume Writing Tips

If you haven’t done a resume recently, it’s time to brush up on the most current trends.

We know many candidates who would rather attempt to write the sequel to War and Peace then to write their own resume’. We help our candidates, but we encourage them to understand what is important in presenting themselves to a prospective company. Here are some of the tips we offer our candidates to help them launch the process of representing their experience and talents on paper.

1. Start by thinking about what you want to convey to a prospective employer. The first rule in writing is to know your audience. You may know what you have to offer, but you have to put yourselves in their shoes. Think about what would interest them about you, and what makes you the best candidate for the job.

2. Make it easy for the reader to skim your resume and still get the main points. Use bold subtitles and communicate key accomplishments in bite-sized sentences.

3. Speak to benefits, not just your experience. It’s a good idea to include examples of how you brought value to your employers: money you saved them, models you’ve developed, procedures you put in place or projects that made them money.

4. Ensure your resume is aligned with your LinkedIn profile, twitter account, blog, and other social media pages. Consistency is key, anything else is confusing and appears as suspicious.

5. Use a format that is mobile and device friendly so that your resume can easily be opened on any device without having to log into a platform like Google Docs. A PDF is always a good choice.

6. Optimize your resume.