Here’s everything you need to know to write a cracking resume.

Let’s get the facts straight first.

FACT: The average recruiter will only spend SIX SECONDS looking at a #resume, so you need to nail it.

FACT: Most people don’t actually know how to write a resume.

FACT: Your resume is your principal self-marketing document, so you need it to sell you, sound like you - and make you stand out!

Today we’re deep diving resume writing to see just what it takes to get your #resume noticed by employers, so you give yourself the best chance of landing an interview.

As the COVID-19 economy continues to squeeze industries, businesses and employment opportunities across the globe, the #hiring market is reporting an increase in candidates competing for a decreasing pool of jobs. Therefore, standing out is more important now than ever before.

There are plenty of templates and tips online that can help you to pull a decent resume together. There are the obvious tips like making sure there are no typos or grammatical errors, using headings and keeping the language short and sharp. But what are the common mistakes that most people make, and how can you avoid them to give yourself the best chance of landing an interview - and the gig?

Structure to pass the screening test

Experienced Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer Victoria Gordon says templating and structuring your resume in the right way is crucial so the content can be quickly scanned and understood by a recruiter, and effectively crawled and translated by screening software. But a common mistake many people make is they try to get too creative or clever with their resume design, which makes it pretty much unreadable for both humans - and robots!

“Template and format is really important both for the recruiter to be able to scan and pick up the most important information, and also for the AI and software to read the content. Some candidates have really fancy formatting features which might look great, but they are counterproductive as the text is unreadable by the screening software, so nobody ever gets to see their beautifully presented document,” she says.

Don’t try and get too fancy

Andrew Brushfield, Director at specialised recruitment company Robert Half, tells seek.com.au that while the content of your resume is important, the finer details of the way you present yourself matter just as much. 

“Resumes with an over-the-top layout may seem creative, however, depending on the job you are applying for, hiring managers might see this as unprofessional,” he says. 

“Remember, employers reviewing your resume don’t spend hours reading it, so it’s best to make it as clear and succinct as possible.”

Andrew says another big unprofessional giveaway is an amateur email address.

“While hotfuzz86@hotmail.com might have sounded good in university, it does distract and comes across as unprofessional in the business world. Consider a more generic email address such as firstname.lastname@gmail.com.”

Recruiters don’t care about your spelling bee trophies

Victoria says another common mistake she sees on resumes is where people try to include an exhaustive list of every single task and minor achievement they’ve ever accomplished, instead of focusing on what is recent and most relevant to the prospective employer.  

“Less is often more when it comes to resumes. Sorry, but the employer doesn’t care that you were captain of your High School football team 23 years ago!” she says.

Instead, you should focus on the position description of job you are applying for, and align your resume so you highlight relevant job experience and professional achievements that translate into benefits for your prospective employer. This can be easily achieved by matching the language in your resume to that used in the job ad, paying attention to the visual presentation and structure of your resume, and responding specifically to the key selection criteria.

Key words are critical. Use them!

Victoria also says using keywords in a resume is crucial to getting noticed in a competitive pool of other applicants.

“Optimise keywords. The front end of any online recruitment process is automated, so if your resume isn’t keyword optimised you’ll never be filtered through to next stages of screening. Your resume might never get read by a human!”

“When we apply for online jobs our resumes are uploaded into a candidate database or subjected to screening tools which scan documents for keyword matches with relevant job descriptions. Candidates with higher keyword matches are more likely to be filtered through for the next stage of screening.  

“I was working with a Chief Information Office last month who applied for a job which had 2,500 applicants. There is no way in the world a human is going to read 2,500 applications or even 10% of those! This shows us how important the automated screening process is – it would have filtered those 2,500 applicants down to about 20 for the next stage of screening."

Showcase your employability skills

Victoria says rather than focusing solely on the technical skills and experience you may have that fit the job description, a good resume also expresses and reflects the ‘soft’ or transferable employability skills increasingly sought by today’s employers.

“Most employers these days are looking for capability and potential. With the world of work moving so rapidly – skills are less important than behavioural attributes and capabilities,” she says.

“The skills you need today are very different to the ones you’ll need in five years so it’s the behaviours, like motivation and aptitude for learning, agility, resilience, creativity, collaboration etc, that will underpin your career success.  Most companies can give you the skills you need to do your job but it’s much harder to teach you to be a positive/proactive/supportive person to work with!”

For more information on how to nail your resume see SEEK’s TOP 5 Resume Tips.

Future Amp equips today’s young people with key skills for tomorrow’s jobs and industries.

Future Amp is releasing a suite of ‘Job Ready’ career development online learning modules for students in October 2020.
The 12 modules have been designed by career educators to provide industry-backed, interactive, activity-based learning, and feature real people in real workplace contexts with practical tips for resume building, career pathway planning and employability skill attainment.

Reach out to our team at hello@futureamp.co to learn how to incorporate ‘Job Ready’ into your in-school careers and employability learning curriculum for 2021.