Five Tips To Get Your Resume Noticed

In a world filled with talented and dynamic people, making your resume stand out could be as simple as few basic tweaks. Here’s what to do.

#1 Ditch clichés and common phrases

Recruiters are inundated with resumes filled with common corporate vernacular like ‘innovative’, ‘creative’, ‘developed’, ‘responsible for’ and “successfully” and after a while they all blend together. So think outside the square and turn to a thesaurus to make sure you stand out from the crowd with a few quirky alternatives.

#2 Consider a functional vs chronological resume

A functional resume allows you to group skill sets and experiences under categories like ‘process management’, ‘financial management’, ‘people management’, ‘team building’, “data analytics” etc. This offers more freedom than the traditional chronological resume which lists your past roles and achievements in the order in which they occurred. A functional document also makes it easier to tailor your resume to make the required skills and experiences pop for recruiters.

#3 Career summary

Consider adding a career synopsis just under your personal details at the top of your resume. With recruiters often pushed for time, they rarely bother to read to the end of a document – so why not give them the best points at a glance.

#4 Change the font

The kind of font you use can’t really make a difference, right? Wrong! What may seem cool and professional to you could actually be frustrating and difficult to read to a potential employer, and may be the difference between you making it to the next level, or ending up on the discard pile. Stick to fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, or Helvetica and don’t be tempted to make them too small to fit more in.

#5 Make the best stuff stand out

Your goal is to give a potential employer the information they want in its easiest to access form, so make sure you don’t bury the good stuff under unnecessary detail and keep it as close to the top as possible.

Don’t forget:

• Ditch common corporate vernacular
• Quantify your results
• Make the best stuff stand out.
• Stick to clear fonts.
• Include a career summary.

This article originally appeared on The Naked CEO