Many people are changing jobs these days. Labeled “the great resignation,” many people are changing their priorities and leaving jobs due to wanting more leisure time, switching to a more fulfilling career path, or making a change because they prefer in office or an at home work environment. You might be considering leaving your job or at least looking for another job to test out the water. The first step is to update your resume. This may be a challenger especially if you have not updated it or applied for a job in many years. If you are having some trouble getting started here are some tips that may be helpful.
Keep content relevant and recent
Recruiters are busy people and often have a lot of jobs they are looking to fill. With that in mind, some recruiters look at resumes for just a few seconds. You want to make sure that your resume stands out by having content in there that is relevant to the job you are applying for and fairly recent. Always keep recency and relevance in mind when working on your resume. It is good to show steady job history but if you had a job five years ago that was not relevant to what you are applying for now, it probably makes sense to leave that experience out and focus more on other experiences that are closer in time and related to the job you are applying for.
Construct impactful bullet points
Under each past job, it is best to have a few bullet points that concisely explain things you have done in your past role that are important. When constructing these bullet points it helps to start with an action verb such as created, managed, or developed. After that action verb, it is helpful to describe something specific that you have done. Finally, it is best to end the bullet point with a result if applicable. An example of this would be "developed a company-wide recruiting initiative that resulted in a twenty percent increase in job applicants." Note that this statement started with the action word “developed” briefly describes something accomplished in the role and ends with a concrete statistic that displays a specific result
Be mindful of the length of the resume
You may have heard that a resume must be one page long and not a word over that one page. I think it's best to think of the one-page rule as an approximate guideline, but your unique circumstances of what job you are applying for may change that. For example, often jobs in academia are looking for a very long resume also known as a curriculum vitae. These could be twenty or thirty pages or more. However, for most corporate-level jobs, a page is a good rough guideline. If you have relevant information that you think is critical it is fine to go a little bit over a page. If you are unsure whether the information is relevant and you are over a page you might want to consider taking that information out. Remember, that recruiters are looking at resumes quickly so if they think it's too long they might not read it all anyway.
Many people are changing jobs. The first step to start looking for a job is to create or update a resume. For some people, the resume process can be overwhelming and stressful. It is helpful to keep content relevant and recent, construct impactful bullet points and be mindful of the length of the resume. If you are still struggling with any aspect of your job search, career counseling can help. Contact me today.