Writing a resume is a high-stakes endeavor.
In a single document, you have to make a recruiter want
to interview you.
And most of the time, they're only
going to read it for a few seconds.
That's why I went to the Indeed career coaches
to get their advice on how to write a winning resume.
And I've boiled it down to four key steps.
In this video, I'll explain how to choose the best
type of resume for your application,
the recommended resume format, how
to maximize the impact of the all-important resume bullet
point, and if you stick around to the end,
I'll give you some insider information
on how to tailor your resume depending on who or rather
what is reading it.
Step one is to determine your resume strategy.
And in order to do so, you have to ask yourself the question,
which will benefit me more?
A chronological resume or a functional resume.
The chronological resume is a resume
where you list your work experience in order
of when it occurred, with the most recently occurring
positions at the top of the resume.
People who have been applying to jobs in the same field
or position as where they are right
now tend to naturally gravitate toward a chronological resume
just because of its intuitive, standard, easy-to-read format.
Chronological resumes are great when
you want to emphasize a depth of experience
if you've been working in one particular industry
for a long time or a particular role for a long time.
And they're also great for people
who want to emphasize their career progression.
Maybe they've climbed the ladder and can show that on paper.
Now, if you do choose a chronological resume,
still stick around even though I'm
going to be covering what a functional resume is next
because you still have to tailor your application
to this particular employer.
And I'll explain how to do that later in the video.
In contrast, a functional resume underscores
your skills and abilities rather than your work history.
If you're someone who's re-entering the workforce
after an employment gap, has moved jobs a lot,
is making a career change or otherwise
isn't sure that through the eyes of the recruiter,
your past history is going to obviously qualify you
for the job, consider a functional resume.
It gives you an opportunity to explain why your experience has
given you the skills and abilities that
do qualify you for the role.
Now, if you have more questions about how
to approach a functional resume or what it typically
looks like, I highly recommend checking out this career guide
article right here.
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So now that we know which type of resume
is best for our particular application,
we can move on to step two, which
is how to format your resume so that your accomplishments
shine.
I'm going to be discussing the chronological resume
format here because that is what most people choose.
But again, check out that link if you'd
like some more information on how
to format a functional resume.
Recommended format, I'm going to be referring to it.
It's right in front of me here.
For a chronological resume is, start, number one,
with the contact info.
This includes your name, your email, your phone number,
any kind of professional profile links
that you want to include if you have a website, and your city
of residence.
Now, for privacy purposes, it is highly recommended
to not include your full address.
That is not necessary.
Then, include a resume summary.
This is a two to three-sentence paragraph
or a description of you and your professional offering.
It's often the first thing a recruiter will see.
And sometimes, that's the only thing they'll scan,
and they won't go beyond into the exact details
of your resume.
So, for more information about how to write a resume summary
and what they typically look like,
we actually have a whole video on it,
which you can check out right here.
All right.
So after resume summary comes work experience.
If you're a working professional or education,
if you are an undergrad or recently graduated student,
we're going to cover work experience first.
The trick here, because a lot of people
ask immediately how far back do I
go enlisting my work experience, is
you don't need to go past 15 years ago.
But you can go past 15 years ago if you
are someone who's returning back to work after an employment
gap.
Just list the relevant experience you have.
Under each employer, you're going
to make sure that you list the company
name, the role title you had, your dates of employment.
And then, you're going to provide three bullet points
detailing your key duties, responsibilities,
and achievements.
You can bump that number of bullet
points up to five when it comes to your most recent employer.
Writing bullet points is a whole tactic in and of itself.
There's a lot to say.
So be sure to stick around for my next tip, where
I'll explain how to do that in a really successful way.
So after your work experience, you
can move on to your educational experience
or list this first if you're an undergraduate student.
When it comes to educational experience,
feel free to list any undergraduate, graduate
degrees, and then post-professional
certifications that you may have that are relevant to the role.
And just a note here as well, if you are concerned
about age bias in any way-- seem either too young
or too old for the role, totally understandable.
And it's actually not needed to list your graduation
date for any of those degrees.
So just feel free to omit that from your resume entirely.
If you are someone that's worried about bias,
we did a great live webinar about this, which we recorded,
and you can check out right here.
OK.
So once you've sorted out those two sections,
you're going to go ahead and list your skills section.
So that includes hard skills, which
are skills that are learned and enable
you to perform technical tasks.
That's things like language fluency
if you're speaking a foreign language, computer programming,
copywriting, software training, things like that.
Then, you can also list soft skills,
which are skills that enhance the quality of our work
or impact how we go about our work.
So that includes things like communication, organization,
time management, and leadership, among others.
Now, I will say, the only caveat to this skills section
placement of underneath those to work history
and educational history sections is
if you're applying to a very technical role.
If you're applying to a role that
requires a lot of hard skills and specific behaviors
in order to be successful in performing those baseline
responsibilities, go ahead and move the skills section way
up high.
I'd recommend putting it probably right
underneath the resume summary because when the recruiter is
scanning your information, you want
to make sure they know that you have
all the qualities necessary to perform this job
point blank period.
And then the rest of it can support that you
know how to do it very well.
But you don't want to be tossed out
of the pile of resumes and applicants
just because they weren't really sure if you have those skills
or qualifications necessary.
All right.
So now we're coming to the final section of the resume, which
is optional where you choose to list out awards, achievements,
publications, or hobbies.
Now, this is a great section if there's
something in your professional offering
that you'd like to share but that you
don't feel like really fits in any of the other sections.
However, I will say that you really
want to make sure that whatever you include here
is quite relevant to the role at hand.
And that's because employers are really crunched for time
when they're hiring and scanning all these resumes.
So you want to make sure that what you are providing
about yourself here supports and enhances
your professional offering rather than maybe drowning out
your key accomplishments.
That's again not to say, don't do this section.
But just make sure you have your reasons
as to why you're doing it.
Before I move on, remember that although this resume
format works really well for most people,
it is completely adaptable, and you should adapt it
according to your professional intuition
as to what's most important to include and where to place it.
For example, if you're a professor or a journalist,
you'd be pretty darn smart to move that optional publication
section that I said to put at the bottom
further up on the resumes so that you
can include and display that really important
professional qualification.
So just let that principle of prime real estate guide
you, knowing that the higher something
is on your resume, the more attention it's going to get.
So prioritize the placement of your content on your resume
very deliberately and very wisely.
All right.
So now that we know how to format a resume,
we can talk about that very important tip
that I promised you a while ago, which
is how to perfect your bullet points, OK?
I'm very passionate about this.
Bullet points are one of the most important components
of your resume because they're your opportunity
to prove your value and showcase your key accomplishments.
So step one is to start every bullet point
with a strong action verb.
Examples would be delivered, acquired, drove, optimized,
things like that.
This positions you as actively providing things to a company
rather than passively describing what
your employer told you to do.
Use these bullet points to describe your accomplishments
or, even better, to quantify them
and then to show their impact on the business.
A great bullet point includes numbers
when possible and always answers the question, so what?
So I have an example here that I'm going to share with you.
There's a really big difference between served food and drink
during weekend shifts and something
like drove customer loyalty by delivering high-quality food
service and wine pairing suggestions
to an average of 100 customers an evening during peak business
hours.
Which sounds more compelling to an employer?
See how much that impact really matters?
And then the final third component of a great bullet
point is being concise.
It is very key to keep it short and sweet.
One to two lines max is what's necessary here.
All right.
We've arrived at the fourth and final tip of the video, which
is, tailor your resume.
This is a tip that a lot of people overlook,
but it's that second component of a central resume strategy
that I was teasing at the beginning of the video.
And when people do try and do this, a lot of the times,
they know they need to do it.
But they don't know how to do it well because, first of all,
it requires insight into the hiring process.
And second of all, it requires a lot of critical thought.
Basically, to tailor your resume successfully,
you have to be able to frame your professional offering
in a way that's going to appeal to two critical audiences--
the recruiter and the applicant tracking system.
And if you don't do it, you're basically
not giving yourself your best shot because you're just
sending out a generic resume to all potential employers that
just talks about what you've done in the past.
Not how that is going to set you up for success
and be valuable to a future employer.
All right.
So let's talk about the two key audiences
you need to win over here.
First up is the applicant tracking system, or what
I will refer to as an ATS.
An ATS is often the first reader of your resume
if you're applying to a job online.
What an ATS does is it inputs the information
from an employer about the desired skills,
qualifications, experience that an ideal candidate would have.
So how do you tailor your resume to win over the ATS?
The good news here is that once you know the trick,
it's really easy.
But you got to do it, OK?
So what you do is you go back to that job description
and really study it.
Make sure that you reference any of the relevant skills
and qualifications you have with the exact same language
that's found there.
For example, let's say the job description
says that the ideal candidate has expert Spanish fluency.
Well, if you are currently describing your fluency
on your resume as native Spanish speaker,
then it's very advisable to tailor your resume
by exactly mirroring that language that's
found on the job description.
Otherwise, the ATS may not pick it up
because it's not scanning for that keyword.
The second audience that your resume must appeal to
is the recruiter that is looking to fill a job for this company.
They probably are not intimately familiar with the skills
and qualifications that would set
a candidate above all the rest.
They need you to make that case and that connection for them.
This means that you can't just list your work experience
and show that you have those things that
are in the job description.
You need to explain the impact and why
you are the best possible candidate for this position.
So consider what in your background
best speaks to why you would uniquely
be the ideal candidate for the role
and mention it right away-- ideally,
in your resume summary.
Plus, it never hurts to mention how you would explicitly help
a business achieve its goals.
So, for example, at the end of my resume summary,
I would say something like seeking
to use proven copywriting and copyediting skills
to help Indeed deliver the highest quality of job advice
to job seekers.
Then, apply the same lens to the rest of your resume, especially
your bullet points.
Personally, I keep a master list of all possible bullet
points that I could mention well over the 5 and 3
recommended on a resume.
Just so that I can go in and, depending on the job,
swap them out to what's most relevant
for that particular application.
And then tweak and tailor it so that it's very
specific to that exact company.
You may end up finding that you benefit
from having multiple starter versions of your resume.
Version A for a company with one focus, version B
for another focus--
and that's really useful, I find.
But the most important thing, regardless of how you start
and how you approach it, is that you tailor the way that you're
framing your professional offering
and how you're describing your accomplishments
to the unique needs of that specific company
every single time you submit a resume.
Of course, tailoring your resume to human eyes
also means that it needs to look nice.
It has to look clean and professional.
So try and do a test where you hold your resume
further away from your face and just look at it as an object.
And if it's feeling really cluttered, then cut some words
or add some white space.
And don't forget to proofread your resume.
If you want some really quick tips on that,
I'll share that sometimes in order
to catch things that our eyes normally glaze over,
we can do something different about the way
that we read it that's disruptive.
So we can read it out loud, or sometimes we
can read it bottom to top instead of top to bottom.
This will help us to catch some common mistakes--
things like fonts, there may be different styles,
or different sizes, inconsistent use of periods--
you can use them for your bullet points or not.
A lot of people ask that question.
But whatever you choose, just stick to one.
And then, obviously, spacing or indentation errors.
So let's quickly recap how to write a winning resume.
Step one is to choose your resume strategy--
functional or chronological.
Step two is to format your resume
so that your accomplishments shine.
Remember that the higher up it is on the page, the more prime
the real estate.
Step three is to perfect your bullet points.
Start out with those strong action verbs,
include numbers when possible, double down on impact,
and keep it concise.
And step four is to tailor your resume
to match the job description.
Remember that you have to appeal to both
the ATS and the recruiter.
If you found this helpful, please let us
know by hitting the like button down below,
subscribing to our channel by clicking this right here.
If you want more career advice or interviewing advice,
we have a ton to say.
It's all in this playlist right here.
And then, if you want some information
on what not to do in an interview,
I highly recommend you checking out this video right here.
All right.
Thank you so much for your time.
I hope this was useful for you in writing a great resume.
And I'll see you next time.
Bye.