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I love writing résumés and have enjoyed helping hundreds of clients land new roles in various fields and management levels. Even with a crisp, new document, it’s still imperative that clients understand how to update their documents according to each job posting they are applying for to land more interviews. With that being said, the more targeted a résumé is, the less tweaking a résumé will need – though it should always be reviewed before applying!

To land more interviews, make sure these three things are happening in your résumé each time that you apply for a new position:

Relevancy: Each time you apply for a position, does the résumé relate to the job posting? Ideally, we want the key skills or core competencies to showcase your areas of expertise related to the job posting. The job descriptions should outline responsibilities and accomplishments that would benefit the company. The professional summary should outline what the candidate brings to the table. It all comes together in the résumé when ensuring that the candidate has relevant experience and can do the job.

Impact: To ensure that your résumé is relevant, it’s important to showcase your relevant skills and accomplishments prominently by listing them by importance or by impact. How did you help your current and previous employers succeed in obtaining their goals? Was it generating revenue? Saving money? Improving productivity? Implementing a new tool or process? These questions can help you identify ways you were successful in the past and therefore, can help an employer be successful in the future.
 
Readability: Nowadays, you can easily hop on Canva or other résumé-building websites that generate beautiful designs and templates. However, they are generally not ATS-friendly, meaning that the system can’t read the content in the design itself. Résumé writing best practices state that content listed in tables, text boxes, and even columns can generally not be read by ATS. It’s much more effective to have a clean résumé document with simpler designs using bold, italics, and underlining to outline headers and sections, making it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to skim through and read your résumé. You can use color as a background and in your font to attract attention without all the bells and whistles.

The résumé should lead to interview calls so be sure that for each application, your résumé is relevant, impactful, and readable. If you need assistance updating your document, write me an email at stephanie@idahonextstepscoaching.com.