Create a Killer Resume and Cover Letter

Preparing Your Resume for Your Job Search

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For many people, finding a new job is on the top of their list of improving their careers. Not unlike just about everything else, job search dynamics change with the passage of time. job search sites, opportunities, industries, and, yes, even resume formats evolve from year to year.

Whether you are looking for your first job or you are a pro at job search,  your job search.

Results should be the focus

Today’s employers are looking for candidates that can demonstrate the fact that they have added value in their former jobs or roles. This means you have to focus on your accomplishments instead of your responsibilities or duties. Making your resume a long list of what you did in your former roles isn’t useful. What you achieved in that time however is very useful.

Focus on the bottom line for the roles you held when writing your resume. This could be money saved for your employers, sales generated, product innovations, improvement in test scores for students, etc.

Whether you are looking for your first job or you are a pro at job search,  your job search marketing toolkit must be up to date with current trends. Your resume is the most important career document. Click To Tweet

Customize your resume for every application

In today’s job market, HR departments are getting wiser and competition is getting stiffer. Your resume will be ignored immediately they figure out that it is a “mass production”. This is why you need to customize it for the role you are applying for.

One easy way to achieve this is to take note of what is required of the role you are applying for then match your qualifications to these job requirements.

Keywords are important

Why? Most HR departments now use an applicant tracking system (ATS). Using keywords that match the job requirement in your resume is the only way you can be sure that your resume will even get a glance. Ultimately, it is through an applicant tracking system (ATS) that companies will be able to screen for the most qualified candidates for a particular position, cutting out the time of looking at candidates that don’t meet the required qualifications.

Length

We are becoming less patient as the years pass when it comes to reading content. The HR departments you are sending your resume to aren’t any different. Your resume will not get attention beyond 2 minutes most of the time, therefore you need to be sure that everything you need to say gets into a concise, impactful document.

Your LinkedIn profile

An active LinkedIn profile is a perfect combination.

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06/07/2023 07:13 pm GMT

Clean up your Social Media profiles

Do you share your Friday Night adventures on any of the social networks? It is time to clean things up. Now.

More and more HR units are asking potential employees to include links to their various profiles in applications. Of course, only a handful of these profiles may get looked at during the initial recruitment process, but if you get to the interview stage, the chances of your profile getting viewed increase. Delete any awkward or eyebrow-raising posts you have and desist from such posts in the future. If any of your accounts is heavy with such posts, you may be better served deleting it entirely or deactivating temporarily.

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06/06/2023 06:53 pm GMT

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