Looking to switch your career up in 2023? Tidying up your resume can improve your chances of landing the job of your dreams.
When your resume is in tip-top shape, it shows potential employers that you’re serious about job-hunting. If you send something outdated and slap-dash, chances are the employer will toss your application into the ‘no’ pile.
Luckily, you can mitigate this by spring-cleaning your resume. From trimming down page length to proofing it thoroughly, this blog explores how you give your resume a fresh makeover.
According to a range of recruitment agencies, keeping your resume short and sweet is key to success. You can trim down your resume by removing any outdated information. Employers prefer that your experience goes back no further than 10 years.
You should also recast your opening summary into a succinct sentence that captures the essence of who you are and what you can offer. In a similar vein, use your list of skills to emphasize your accomplishments. Including specific examples to show off your skills, as well as what you achieved when you utilized that skill, can position you in a positive light.
We recommend listing your skills, accomplishments and past experiences as a snappy bullet list. This helps your experience stand out from the rest of your document, and allows the employer to look at it without getting bogged down in the details.
Social media can influence how prospective employers view your capabilities. LinkedIn is one platform employers will check to ensure your experience matches up. If your resume says one thing but your LinkedIn profile says another, then it can raise some red flags.
You should be treating your LinkedIn profile as an online, public resume. What you update on your own personal document should be updated on LinkedIn. They should be reflective of one another, rather than have any differences.
Once you’ve trimmed down your content, it’s time to spice up your resume design. Ensure that the document is clean, sleek and easy to navigate. You can split your information into columns to clearly distinguish and separate various sections. This is also an excellent way to make your list of skills and experience stand out from the rest of the resume.
Your resume should have a clearly defined hierarchy of information. Visually organizing your information allows employers to easily identify key pieces of information that they want at a glance. In addition to a sound structure, using a clean sans serif font can emphasize your professionalism.
When designing your resume, use a contemporary and consistent color scheme that reflects your personality. You can also include a professional headshot and logo to make your resume more personalized.
After exporting a PDF or Word version of your resume, it’s time to proofread. Reading through your resume after you’ve reshaped and redesigned it is crucial. It gives you ample opportunity to work out what sounds over-the-top or unintentionally clumsy. You should also review your work to see if you can remove superfluous words or statements.
As part of this process, you should check for spelling or grammatical errors, and review how the overall design shows up as a PDF or Word document. If an image is cut off or there’s a single typo in your resume, it can show that you’re careless and lack attention to detail. It gives employers a reason to decline your application and hire someone else.
It’s best if you do multiple proofreads and reviews until you’re satisfied that there are zero mistakes, then get ready to send it off. Ensure the employer’s contact details are accurate and up-to-date. There’s nothing worse than getting a bounce back message after investing your time and energy into cleaning up your resume!
When you tidy up your resume, it’s important that you keep it current, clean and fresh. But if you’re unsure about what to cut or include, then you can reach out to a recruitment agency, like Woods & Co, for advice about how you can spring clean your resume.
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