By Louise Kursmark
What’s a perfect resume? It’s a resume that opens doors, gets you noticed during your job search, attracts interviews, and ultimately gets you hired! While every resume is unique, follow these resume builder tips to make sure that yours is as close to perfect as it can be.
1. Review sample resumes. Don’t copy another person’s resume or try to make your background fit into an arbitrary resume template. But looking at great resume examples will give you ideas, solutions, and inspiration for your own masterpiece.
2. Start with a goal. It’s impossible to write a resume that’s clear, powerful, and sharply focused if you don’t know what kind of job you’re looking for. Decide what you ideally want to do and write a resume for that position. Chances are, it will be perfectly useful for other, similar positions as well.
3. Showcase your success stories. The unique accomplishments that you feature in your resume are what make it unique, interesting, and memorable. Choose achievements that relate to your goal and demonstrate your professional skills.
4. Get organized. We’ve all seen examples of resumes that lack consistency in design, coherence in structure, and clarity in format. Don’t let your resume be one of these bad examples! Organize your material before you write. Arrange similar information in the same way to help your readers understand your background and qualifications.
5. Highlight your job titles. In most cases, the position you held is more meaningful than the company where you worked, so don’t let those good titles get lost on your resume. Bold type, all caps, small caps, or slightly larger types are good options to consider when presenting your job titles.
6. Emphasize what’s important. On the other hand, if all of your experience has been in low-level jobs unrelated to your current career goals, then it doesn’t make sense to highlight those job titles. Instead, call attention to projects you’ve completed, leadership roles you’ve held, volunteer work you’ve done, or other meaningful activities that will let an employer understand the value you offer.
7. Dig deep to find results. Job search today is intensely competitive, and your resume may be all you have to capture attention. You can make your resume stand out by including specific, measurable results of your jobs, projects, and activities. Precise numbers and concrete outcomes will distinguish you from the pack of job seekers who write bland, generic resumes.
8. Be creative. Looking at resume examples and using a resume template builder like ResumeHUB are great ways to get started writing your resume, but don’t be afraid to bend the rules just a bit to make your resume as unique as you are.
9. Take the time to get it right. Employers consider your resume to be an example of your very best work. It’s not something you can dash off at the last minute. Invest the time necessary to produce a top-notch document—write thoroughly, edit extensively, and proofread obsessively.
10. Get help with your resume. No need to go it alone! There are great online tools like ResumeHUB that make creating a professional resume easy. These resume builder programs walk you through each step and provide help for each section of the resume. Once you have your resume written, ask people you respect for their opinion. Find a mentor in your field who can coach you on resumes, interviewing, job search, and how to get ahead in your career. Most of all, understand that you’re likely to change jobs 10 or more times in your career, so learning now to write the perfect resume will prepare you for every change that’s sure to come in the years ahead.
