How to Keep Your Resume on Target

Is your resume too long? Is it unfocused? Does it include unnecessary material? If you answer yes to any of these questions, it’s time to act.

Here’s some good advice from Cheryl Simpson, writing for Careerealism, who offers ten tips for keeping your resume on target:

1. Say more with less — “Cut out words that aren’t needed and delete words that are repeated.”
2. Leverage action verbs — “It may be accurate to say you wrote the company’s five-year plan, for example, but it’s more powerful to say that you strategized, authored, and executed the company’s first-ever five-year plan.”
3. Eliminate passive language — “The sentence, ‘I was exposed to different cultures, people, and challenges’ is weaker than, ‘Gained cross-functional and cross-cultural exposure to 5 ethnicities in 12 countries,’ for example.”
4. Use numbers when possible — “Numbers talk, so it’s imperative to use them in resumes to quantify key achievements and context information.”
5. Be specific — Use “specific details that add value and meaning to the text.”
6. Format your resume more effectively — “Maximize readability and use of space and minimize document length.”
7. Categorize material –“Some content can be categorized or sub-categorized to convey information in more powerful ways.”
8. Place your material in context — “Give your readers the right quality and type of detail to help them understand the full scope of your impact.”
9. Focus on results — “In real-estate, it’s location, location, location that is critical; in resumes, it’s achievements, achievements, achievements.”
10. Do not include extraneous details — “Choose carefully which details you include and how you do so.”

 
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