Seven Resume Tips for 2015

Your resume is a critical piece in your job search. It gives a potential employer a glimpse into who you are, your experience, and what you can offer to their company. Getting your resume right is crucial for making this introduction as good as possible.

Here are seven resume tips you can use in 2015 to land your dream job:

1. Keep it concise. You have about 10-15 seconds to grab a recruiter’s attention and make them want to find out more about you. Don’t use too many words or go into too much detail on any one topic. If you have less than seven years of work experience, keep your resume to one page. If you have seven years or more, you can bump it up to two. Never go beyond two pages.
2. Customize it for each employer. This can be difficult, but it is essential. Find out a bit about the employer and the job requirements. Write the resume with that information in mind. You can have a general resume that outlines your qualifications. Just tweak it a bit for each potential employer.
3. Add a summary of objectives to the top of the resume. Many recruiters will look at the summary during their 10 to 15 second glance. The objective section should speak directly to the job opening. It should reflect your experience and where you want to go with your future.
4. Focus on what you can do, not what you did. A resume that reads like a historical tome will not attract a hiring manager. They want to know what you can do, based on that experience, for their company. Focus on action verbs. With the right language, you can show that you can bring those skills forward to their job opening.
5. Stick with the truth. Do not exaggerate. Do not make anything up. Today, employers are checking references and doing online searches for almost every job candidate. If they find that you exaggerated or lied on the resume, you just lost your chance at that job and maybe others.
6. Use keywords. Look at the job description. Make sure your resume highlights some of the keywords in that description. Make a heading of a keyword. For example, if you have done work as a pharmaceutical sales rep, put that experience under a heading like “Pharmaceutical Sales”.
7. Remember simple is better. Keep the format of the resume clean and simple. Don’t use fancy fonts or try to crowd too much information on the page. Select a white or off-white paper. Leave plenty of white space. All of these tweaks make the resume easier to read which makes the employer more likely to read it.

These resume tips will help you grab the attention of a potential employer. You, as a job seeker, will get a better chance at landing an interview and being able to make your personal pitch for the job face-to-face. That is the first step in landing your dream job.

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