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- Kris Dempster
- Wednesday, June 21
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The purpose of a résumé is to get an interview. As a marketing document that represents you, it is crucial to effectively communicate that you are a qualified candidate for the desired position. To achieve this, your résumé should include your contact information, past relevant experience, education, hard skills, soft skills, achievements, accomplishments, and any other important information that you deem necessary and relevant to the position.
Below are my best résumé tips for 2023:
- Know yourself – “Know Thyself” is an inscription at the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Many writers have attributed this quote to Socrates, which I am sure he said in some form but he was not the first do so. With that said, in any résumé, you must know your value that you will provide to the company. To know your value to any company, it is imperative to know yourself.
- Know your audience – No, Socrates did not say this, too. The meaning of knowing your audience is to know what the company desires and target the résumé to what they want. How do you do this? By going through the job description with a fine-tooth comb and picking out emphasized or repeated keywords within the job description and placing them on the résumé.
- Customize and Target your résumé – Invest in keywords and phrases within the job description. This will allow you to customize your résumé specifically to the job description. If the job description emphasizes communication or customer service skills, then these skills must be on the résumé. This strategy will also combat against the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
- Accomplishments and Achievements – Underneath your job history, you will have bullet statements, which are your everyday tasks and responsibilities. With that said, these bullet statements should be in the form of accomplishments and achievements. How do you do this? By using the STAR Method – which is an acronym for Situation/Task, Action, and Result. Tell us what happened, the action you took and the outcome, if the outcome includes numbers, this would be a great place to quantify your outcome.
- Use Numbers – If you can use numbers within your résumé, then do so because they will stand out in the wording. Did you save the company money, did you grow revenue, did you save the company time on a new project, did you reduce employee turnover? Numbers attract the reader to continue reading and provides results and proof of your achievements and accomplishments.
Are you struggling to write your résumé? If so, come talk to one of Richland Library’s Certified Career Coaches to help you create that customized résumé for that specific job. Follow this link and fill out the form for a FREE one-on-one career coaching appointment.
