3 Resume Trends That Will Help Improve Your Resume
Have you sent out hundreds of resumes with little response back? Well, you are not alone. With these tough economic times and millions of people out of a job, there are a high amount of applicants applying to those jobs that you so desperately need. So what do you need to know about today's job search and resume building?
With technology advances, applying for a job with a resume has significantly changed within the last decade. Now of days, resumes are generally reviewed by a machine instead of a human being. What does this mean for you? Keywords, keywords, keywords! When you read a job posting that interests you, you must take down the key skills and requirements of that job. As once the resumes are received, they will be scanned through a machine looking for those keywords. Resumes that do not have them are not considered.
With this competitive job market and use of scanners to review resumes, you must personalize each resume for that specific job that you are applying for. This means, you no longer have one resume you post with. You must change and adapt your resume for every different job. If you do not, your key words and skills will not be outlined to the best of your capability; which could be the difference in being considered for an interview or being kept on file!
Another serious change in resume trends is including personal information. In the past, prospective applicants would place their hobbies or interests on their resumes. This is no longer acceptable or helpful information. When a recruiter has hundreds of resumes to skim through, they do not care about your personal interests or hobbies. It is completely irrelevant information that is taking up their precious time.
Including personal hobbies and interests could actually be held against you: For example, you place on your resume that you are a beauty pageant contestant. Well, the whole time you are doing your interview, the recruiter is questioning your sincerity and wondering if you have been coached on how to answer her questions. You could lose out on your job, because of this extra and irrelevant information.
If you are currently fall into these categories of what not to do on your resume, you must sit down and rethink your resume strategy. Your potential employer receives hundreds and thousands of resumes and statistics show that when a human is reading them, they will only take 20 seconds to skim through and determine if they are interested. You have a very short time to sell yourself and this is done through key words, individualizing your resume for each job and for leaving out any irrelevant information pertinent to the job you are posting for. Do not waste anymore time applying with a redundant resume, start improving it right away and you could have your dream job before you know it! |