Top Tips On Revamping Your Professional Resume To Get Shortlisted In 2022
/Tired of facing back-to-back rejection?
Yes, not hearing back from a potential employer after sending in your resume can be frustrating. Despite having the potential to bring a lot to the table, when employers can’t seem to recognize your capabilities, you are pushed to the verge of doubting yourself and your potential.
Before you start doubting yourself entirely, why don’t we identify the possible problem here?
Your resume.
All the hindrances you’re facing could possibly be because of your resume. You see, that piece of document is the first thing employers see when you send in your application.
Therefore, it may be high time you upgraded your professional resume to get shortlisted this year.
Who knows, soon after you implement these tips that you’re about to read in this blog, you might bag that job you’re eyeing after all.
So, without further ado, here are top 5 tips for revamping your resume:
Make Your Resume ATS-compliant
Many job seekers are not aware of this, but the majority of employers are now using Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) to filter out the most relevant resumes out of the hundreds or thousands of resumes they receive for a single vacancy.
ATS scans your resume for keywords and if your resume falls short of it, your application gets rejected.
Thus, to make your resume ATS-friendly, you need to sprinkle your resume with keywords that are pertinent to your industry.
For instance, if you are an IT business analyst, your resume must have keywords like business analysis, software, data analysis, etc. You can take a look at an IT business analyst resume sample for more clarity.
Also, it’s necessary to do some research to find out the trending keywords in your industry so that your resume is up-to-date.
Another approach to finding the keywords you need to place in your resume is reading the job description and requirements provided in the job listing you’re applying to.
Use Bullet Points And One-liners In Your Resume
When recruiters check your resume in real-time after the ATS selects your resume, it has to be compelling enough for them to give you a call back for an interview.
However, recruiters don’t spend more than a minute at the most while going through your resume.
If your resume is filled with bulky paragraphs, it really will bore the employers and they might not even consider reading the lengthy resume.
Thus, the idea here is to frame bullet points with one-liners that are sure to leave an impact on your employers.
The bullet points will help make your resume crisp, to the point, and reader-friendly.
Follow the STAR Format to Frame Your Bullet Points
Now, for your bullet points to actually meet their purpose of impressing the recruiters, you can follow the STAR format to frame your one-liners.
STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
Your sentence has to give the recruiters a clear understanding of your past roles and experiences by talking about the situation, the task you were assigned, the action you took to complete the task, and the result you achieved.
Pretty simple, right? Here are a few examples of one-liners framed using the STAR format:
Developed and executed sales strategies for 50+ products and achieved a 30% increase in sales.
Supervised recruitment and training of 80+ recruits to optimize the onboarding process
Liaised with 20+ local hawkers to reduce wastage and brought down company expenditure by 15%.
Use Power Verbs and Figures
As you may have noticed from the examples, each of the bullet points begins with a power verb and includes a figure.
The reason for doing so is to make your one-liners all the more impressive.
When you are talking about your achievements and the work you did in your past company, use numbers and percentages rather than providing a vague description.
What this does is to create a clear picture of your accomplishments and potential.
Meanwhile, beginning the line with a power verb helps demonstrate your strengths and adds more context to help recruiters understand your worth as an employee.
Ensure Your Resume Summary Is Crisp
Ideally, when you sit down to write your resume, you must try to write a summary of your resume at the very end.
This way, you’ll have a better understanding of what you need to highlight and skip in your summary or objective.
Also, the summary should not exceed more than 4 lines as you need to ensure your resume is only a page long (Unless you have 10+ years of experience).
Begin your summary with the number of years of experience you have and go on to highlight the important accomplishments you have achieved and the skills you possess.
You can also use the STAR format in this section to frame your sentences and don’t forget to include relevant keywords.
Make sure you implement these tips to upgrade your resume and increase your interview shortlists in 2022.
