The 5 Best Tips for Writing a Resume

An effective resume should be a powerful document that represents the best of you and your accomplishments. However, you can’t just free-form this. Hiring managers are buried in hundreds of resumes and if you want your resume to be seen, you have to take the extra time to make it stand out. To help you create a resume that can get noticed, we’ve compiled the 20 best tips for writing a resume.

Your resume is a written documentation of your job history and needs to truly “speak to” the hiring agent and convince them to take the next step and set up an interview with you. Here are some tips that will help you create an effective resume.

Tips for Writing a Resume

Focus on Keywords

With so many employers using digital databases these days, it makes sense to put some focus on making sure the right keywords show up in your resume. Read the job description to try and get a sense for the nouns that the hiring agent will be looking for, then make sure those keywords show up on your resume.

Prove Your Strengths

Making a huge list of your strengths isn’t enough. You have to back that up with some proof. Example: don’t just tell them you are a “problem solver” give them real examples of problems you’ve solved.

Focus on Titles

As mentioned, hiring agents may have hundreds of resumes to look through. With volume that high, it is very unlikely that they will actually sit down and read through every resume they receive. They are much more likely to skim it for a few moments to see if something pulls them in and compels them to actually read it. The titles used for your previous jobs can do this. Take the time to make them stand out.

Bullet Points

Since most hiring agents will only be skimming your resume at first, make it easier for them to do this. Bullet points can help make your resume much easier to skim.

Listing Responsibilities is Not Enough

Another of our tips for writing a resume is to not just focus on your responsibilities. When you simply list your responsibilities, you’re telling the hiring agent what you were supposed to do. However, that doesn’t give them any insight into what you actually did or how well you did it. Tell them about your achievements. If you can include numbers to prove your point, it’s that much better.

Make it Specific

The biggest mistake job hunters make is to prepare one resume and send it out for every job that interests them. A generic resume tells the hiring agent you want A job. A resume that is tailored to their specific job opening tells them that you want THIS job. For an effective resume, you should tweak it for each job and highlight the specific things the hiring agent will be looking for.

Additional Tips for Writing a Resume

In addition to all the tips for writing a resume we’ve already listed, it’s important to not forget the basics. Proof read your resume, and do it several times. Then use a good online spell check program to look for something you may have missed. Finally, have someone else review your resume. Many times a fresh perspective and new set of eyes can identify additional problems that need to be corrected.