4 Strategies to Improve Your Resume and Stand Out from the Crowd

In a world of bland resumes and rehashed experience and skills descriptions, it’s becoming increasingly hard for job searchers to stand out as qualified candidates. Below are 4 ways to make your resume more attractive in the eyes of recruiters and hiring managers.

Stick to a Modern Resume Style

Many job searchers tend to miss the forest for the trees, taking too much time on small things that, in the end, don’t matter all that much to hiring managers and recruiters from employment agencies. Traditional resume writing guides from the 80s and 90s will tell you to use fancy fonts, double lines, and blocks. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with this style, it just looks dated.

Stick to a modern and clean resume that uses white space. Formatting should be simple and bolding any text should be done for a good reason (i.e. emphasis). As for fonts, use Arial or Calibri—just remember to make your text readable.

Customize a Resume According to the Post You’re Applying For

Given the sheer volume of resumes recruiters and hiring managers have to go through, a generic resume just won’t cut it.

Sure, most job searchers will customize their resumes, going as far as switching and highlighting certain sections, but only a few actually tailor their resumes to the jobs they’re applying for. If you’re applying for a sales position, it only makes sense to emphasize the most relevant areas of your experience, perhaps by switching up bullet points or tweaking your skills presentation to present yourself as a qualified candidate.

Focus on Accomplishments Instead of Responsibilities

It’s not enough to say your previous job involved selling cars at the showroom—the job title, “Car Salesman,” is already self-explanatory. What hiring managers want to know is whether you were any good, which is why it’s important to focus on accomplishments instead of job descriptions. And there’s no better way of doing that than with hard numbers.

  • How many units did you sell?
  • How much money did the showroom save thanks to your efforts?
  • Did you take anyone under your wing? If so, how many trainees/interns did you groom for their posts?

Bottom line? Use numbers to your advantage in order to quantify your accomplishments.

Proofread Your Resume

Proofing your resume may seem like such a simple thing, but you’ll be surprised at the number of resumes many staffing services companies receive with grammar errors, typos, and spacing issues—you can bet resumes like these end up in the bin.

The best thing you can do is proof your resume the day after finishing your draft, just so you have a fresh pair of eyes to do it. Better yet, you can have other people look at your resume to spot errors for you.

Looking for a New Job?

The knowledge that you’ll be doing something you love at work is one of the most motivating things possible. If you’re looking for a new job in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, contact Snelling Georgia Group. Our experienced staff will work with you to find a job you can’t wait to wake up for in the morning. To learn more, contact us today!

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