How to Tailor Your Resume to a Specific Job Description - Career Sidekick

How to Tailor Your Resume to a Specific Job Description - Career Sidekick How to Tailor Your Resume to a Specific Job Description Resume/CV / https://www.edenscott.com/blog If youve read any type of resume advice online theres a good chance you saw many recommendations that you should tailoryour resume foreach job.Youre probably wondering- Is it really necessary??It might be tempting to skip it, because yes- it takes time.But it really willmake a huge difference in the number of companies that call you back and invite you to interview.Im talking about an exponential increase in callbacks not a slight increase. Ive tried both ways, trust me.And tailoring your resume is not as hard as it sounds. Ill take you through it step by step. But first, read this next section because its importantThe Problem With Not Tailoring Your Resume:Most job seekers go create a resume with the goal of seemingas impressive as possible. Thats not what a hiring manager is looking for though, especially not at first.Theyre not evaluating how impressive you are, or how smart you are, or anything like that.Theyre taking your resume, putting it side-b y-side with the job description and deciding if you have the skills and experience needed to do thisspecific job.Theywant to see evidence that you can come in and perform well from day 1.When you create a general resume with the goal of showing all of your impressive experience, what you are doing isnot in line with what the company is checking for.Theres a disconnect, and thiscauses a lack of callbacks.This all happens because you made yourresume about YOU.When you a tailor a resume to a specific job, it becomes about THEM. And thats how you get the interview!How To Tailor Your Resume to a Job:1. Identifywhats most importantto the companyThe key to making your resume attractive to a companyis to tailor itto the job description.You can use the job descriptionto figure out their needs and priorities and then makeyour resume mirror that.Things to look for:What responsibilities are mentionedfirst? Whats mentioned lower down and might be less important?What specific requirements or qual ifications do they list?Are any themes repeated throughout? (like leadership, multitasking, organization, etc.)2. Matchyourresume contentwith the job descriptionNow that you understand a bit about what the company wants, look at your resume.You want to tailor your resume to the job description, starting by matching the most important things on the job description with the most visible areas on your resume.Make the first few bulletpoints under each previous job on your resume be as relevant as possible. Your resume employment history is one of the first places recruiters and hiring managers look, so its one of the most important areas to tailor!If youre looking for your first job, you can tailor your education and other related experience instead. Same concept.If the job description emphasized leadership, dont talkabout all your individual accomplishments first. Instead, put a bullet point that mentions anyleading youve done taking the lead on projects, training,supervising others. N o matter how small, find a way to demonstrate leadership!Then you can list your individual accomplishments.Maybe the individual part was 90% of your last role, and leadership was only 10%. It doesnt matter, mention the leadership first, just like the job description did.If you have multiple positions on your resume, tailor all of them.If you have an objectiveor summary section in your resume, tailor that too! Look at how the company describes the overallrole and match your summarywith that description.3. Reorder, add, removeYou can accomplish what I described above with a few different methods.First, you can reorder thebullet points and info you already have. Push the most relevant experienceto the beginning of each section and move other less-relevant pieces lower down.Im mentioning this first because its easiest. Youre just cutting and pastingdifferent pieces, with no writing needed.Next, you canwrite new bullet points. You might see something on the job description, realize its n ot mentioned on your resume at all but its something you do have a bit of experience with. So add it!And finally youcan remove ordelete informationif the new bullet points youve added have made it redundant, orif its just not relevant at all.Heres a good way to know whether to remove something: Ask yourself if a company will be confused by any of the info you provided.Ifyou think the hiring manager isgoing to ask, whydid they think it made sense to include this information?, then maybe it should be removed.Or if you need to save space or make room, you can delete some of your old bullet points to make room for the new tailored info that youre adding.As a final note, you can reorder whole sectionsof your resume as well.Example: Moving yourEducation section above or below your Employment section. For most cases youd want it below. As a general rule of thumb, the first thing a hiring manager wants to see is your most recent experience.So the less they have to dig for that, the better!B ut I know there are jobs out there where a hiring manager cant even consider interviewing you without seeing you have the specific education andtrainingrequired. Nurses, pilots, etc.So in that case, you can consider putting your education up top. Useyour best judgement based on the job description. Did they mention these qualifications right off the bat? Or was it an afterthought near the bottom?4. Providecompelling evidenceNot all bullet points are created equal. Lets say you read that multi-tasking is a big challenge in the job youre applying for, so you decide to tailor your resume for it.Do you think writing, excellent multi-tasker in your career summaryis going to be impressive or convincing enough?Do you think having one bullet point saying, frequently required to multi-task underyour most recent job will impress the hiring manager?No way!You need to provide specifics: Facts, figures, examples, stories. Something that shows the hiring team that you can come in and be effective in this job right away.Heres what you could put as a bullet point forthe example above: Managed 4-5 simultaneous projects including all timelines, goals, and results. Frequently required to makeschedulingadjustments as new projects were initiated.Thats convincing!Other ideas for facts and figures to include:Percentages (a % increasein sales, a % growth you contributed to, etc.)Dollar amounts (managed $___ worth of customer accounts, $___ worth of projects, $___ advertising budget, team budget, etc.)Number of people (trained 4 new employees, interacted with up to 10 supplierson a daily basis, etc.)Geography (managed work for various clients across 4 continents)I wrote a complete article on how to add numbers to enhanceyour resume, you can check it out here.5. Review everythingOnce youre comfortable that youve covered everything possible on your resume in terms of what the job description asks for, dowhat the hiring manager would doLay your resume side-by-side with the job descriptio n and glance through it. Does everything fit andmake sense? Will the company be able to clearly see why you chose to apply for this position and why youre interested?Or will they ask, Hm, I wonder why this person thought to apply here?Thats what you want to avoid!Tailoring Your Resume to a Job Will Also Help You in the InterviewIf you follow the steps above, youre going to beway better prepared than the other candidates in the interview.Youll have a better understanding of the job and the employers needs, so you can make sure your interview answers are laser-targeted.For example, when they ask you, tell me about yourself, instead of just naming random facts or pieces of work experience, youll be able to focus on whats most relevant fortheir job. You can talk about the pieces of experience and accomplishments that best demonstrate youll be able to succeed in their job!Thats going to get you a whole lot more job offers!So taking the time to learn how to tailor your resume to a job won t just get you more interviews, itll help you turn those interviews into job offers, too.What to Do NextHeres a great way to get started: Gofind one job descriptionfor a position youd want to apply for. Try to find something thats typical and middle of the road for the type of positionyoud want. This is important because were going to create a master copy of your resume.Follow the steps above and tailor your resume to that job description you just found, and then save that file. Thats yourmaster copy for this job search.When you apply for other jobs, use that fileas a starting point.You might find thatyou only need to make one or two small adjustments from one job to the next!Sometimes more is needed of course, and its well worth it either way.As a final note:If youre applying for a few different types of positions, create a master copy for each. I was in this scenario a few years backwhen I was looking to either continue as a recruiter, or go into corporate sales. I was getting abs olutely no responses from my general resume, because it was tailored a bit to both areas.I admit it- I was lazy. I tried to create one general resume toappeal to every employer in two entirely different areas of work! I thought if I went half and half, Id have just enough to please everyone.Horrible idea, it didnt work. I pleased no one.If you try to make yourresume good enoughfor every job out there, the reality is it wont be good enoughfor any job! You need to tailor it.I didnt see any results in that job search until I created two separate resumes. And then after tailoring my resume further with my method above, things really took off I went from no callbacks to 10+ the next week.If you have any questions about this, leave a comment below and ask!