Recruiter Tips On How To Leverage Your Resume In 2022
Easy tweaks that will help you take your CV to another level.
I am sure you’ve heard a lot about different rules and tricks that you need to follow in order to draft a perfect resume and get noticed by a recruiter or hiring manager. However, being a recruiter myself I often recognize that even by following these general rules a lot of candidates still struggle to showcase their qualifications and stand out from the crowd. Therefore, if you think that your average resume is not doing much for you check out these few tips.
Be specific
First and foremost, when drafting a resume you need to identify some of the things that you are looking for in your next role. Instead of being general, you might want to specify points like the exact job title or job function, industry, company size and anything else that can make you a perfect fit for certain jobs and employers. You would usually include this information in the “career objective” section to indicate how you envision your next career step and where you see yourself.
Let’s imagine if I were to apply to a Sales Recruiter job at a startup company using one of these career objectives. Which one do you think would be more efficient?
“HR professional is seeking a challenging opportunity with a reputable organization where I can apply my project management skills and attract top-notch talent to help the company’s growth.”
“Sales professional with a successful track record of filling various roles of different levels is looking for an opportunity to join a startup environment in tech space and utilize my strategic thinking skills to attract best sales talent.”
I think you got the point.
Instead of “career objective” you can also use “professional summary” if you are an established professional and you’ve got quite a bit of experience under your belt.
Make it short and sweet
You probably heard that recruiters spend on average 10 seconds to go over one’s resume. Well, that seems to be about right. Therefore, the shorter your resume the better. You can easily fit your few years of experience and other highlights into one page. Unless you are just stuffing those pages with unnecessary information such as most common soft skills, job positions before your professional career, description of the companies, or job responsibilities. Instead, organize your resume in a way that will showcase only the most relevant information.
In my mind, this is one of the best tips one can use to enhance their resume. The way your resume looks will tell a lot about your soft skills. So instead of squeezing “ Highly organized professional with the ability to communicate clearly and concisely” try to build your resume in a way that won’t need this explanation.
You might also want to compare resumes to job advertisements. Think about what kind of job ads attract you, what information you are looking for when reading through, how much time you spend on it. I personally hate those job postings that are boring, have long lists of responsibilities section, ask for too much and have poor employer branding. However, I like ones that are short and very clear. This can be a really great way to utilize such perspective when drafting/updating your resume.
Don’t forget to mention your achievements and/or responsibilities outside of your direct job function
It is really annoying to see resumes filled with a ton of bullet points that describe job responsibilities. Please know that this information doesn’t deliver any actual value for recruiters or hiring managers who review resumes. Believe it or not but they already know what standard job responsibilities are for the jobs that they advertise. Instead, try describing some of your achievements and responsibilities that are outside of your direct job function. These things stand out!
One of the tips that I got from my manager is that you might want to keep a record of your accomplishments on a monthly or quarterly basis. Imagine having all those points ready for you once it’s time to make a move. It will make a lot of difference not only from a career move perspective but also regular performance reviews.
Ensure that your CV is relevant to the job you’re applying for
Last but not least! Before you hit that “apply” button make sure your resume matches the job advertisement. I’ve seen a lot of times when candidates apply to jobs that don’t align with their resume. And I am not talking about career transition cases.
If you do that then you are not only wasting somebody’s time on the other end but your own time as well. When it comes to job applications you really need to focus on quality rather than quantity. Job search is not a lottery, not exactly. Don’t think that the more applications you submit the higher your chances of getting that interview. Not if you apply to every single job ad you see with the same resume. Instead, try to filter your job search with things like job titles, industry, seniority level, company size, etc.
Final Thoughts
If your resume is not getting you enough responses from employers it is clearly a sign that something needs to be changed. You might not need to transform your CV into something completely different but to try one step at a time.
