It’s an ongoing process: We keep up with the latest industry requirements and standards, perform rewrites to keep current, answer questions, and add new functions and skills. Sounds like your day job? Well, yes – but it’s also an accurate description of what you need to be doing with your resume.
Here at Market Street Talent, we see a lot of resumes over the course of matching talented tech professionals with the right opportunities at our partnering organizations. That’s why today, we wanted to share some friendly advice for professionals in our industry about how to rewrite your resume to avoid making the most common errors.
1) Revise your resume whenever you reach a career milestone, and add in accomplishments that you’d be proud to have recognized. Also, keep up with industry standards for social professional profiles and your resume. Start by making sure you’re formatting your job experience correctly within the document and using the correct file attachment – use .doc or .txt files, and not a .pdf – because appearance really does matter.
2) Don’t put all of your experience on your resume. There are many schools of thought on this, but we think it’s better to highlight your best efforts, rather than overwhelming the person reading your resume with too much information. We recommend that you start with the most recent (or most impressive) accomplishments, tell your story as if it were an ad, and keep it short. (Three sentences for each bullet point is a good standard to follow.)
3) Add your social media handles to your contact information – if your profiles are polished and professional. We recommend that you keep up a Linkedin profile with testimonials and letters of recommendations for hiring managers to review if they are interested. But don’t use images in your document – a resume is not a Facebook or Twitter page. Also, avoid using tables or other graphics.
4) Highlight your business and soft skills alongside your technical expertise. For example, are you the go-to person in your department when someone from sales needs help explaining something to a client? Are you the IT support your coworkers trust to answer questions because you make things clear, and seem easy? Put the spotlight on your abilities. Hiring managers and recruiters want your tech expertise, but they also want to work with good people.
5) List outside projects and any professional work you’re truly passionate about. This one tip will help you put together a resume that really stands out. If you’re taking time to do consulting work, mentoring, volunteering your tech skills for a nonprofit, or working on a project you’re excited about, then say so! These things make you seem like a well-rounded human being and someone who keeps up with the latest industry developments – just because you enjoy your work.
6) Never stretch dates on your resume to hide employment gaps, pad your education or exaggerate your skills. Recruiters and hiring managers will find out, and it will tarnish your reputation. Enough said.
7) Customize your resume to suit the job you’re applying for. You want your potential employer to know you’ve paid attention and done your homework. Creating a customized resume is the first step to accomplish that. When you use key words specific to the job description, you also have an advantage if the organization is using an automated applicant tracking system.
Bonus tip: Before you send out your resume, check your networks to see if there is someone that could make a personal introduction for you or provide you with a recommendation. And be sure to get in touch with us at Market Street Talent. We are always interested in hearing from qualified, talented professionals!