How to make your resume stand out

Posted on by Forest in General, Opinion, Saving Money & Finances

Knowing how to make your resume stand out could land you that job – In a time when unemployment is heading on 10% and companies are running at bare minimum staff more and more people are looking for work. This means resume stacks are twice as high and you need to stand out.

How to make your resume stand out, some ideas

Your resume is the first impression about you and your professional profile. It includes your qualifications and sometimes aspirations and is supposed to be you in a page or so! To summarize anyone professionally or personally in one page is virtually impossible but we have to try our hardest!

Getting your resume to stand out in the pile may need a little creativity so I thought it would be good to share some ideas to help that happen.

Tailor you resume closely to every job - It’s easy to just send the same resume to every job and just fashion an individual cover letter but take the time to adjust the resume too maybe mentioning the company name somewhere in the first few lines of the page or using words directly asked for in the job description

Find a senior resume and use it as a template – With things like LinkedIn and other online profiles existing you may be able to actually find the resume of the person who is interviewing you or other seniors at the company. This will give you an idea of what they think is important and give you a template and idea of how to reformat yours for that particular job.

Get it professionally designed - Most resume’s look exactly the same. It could pay to make yours look a little different and if you find a good (not tacky) professional designer to add small graphical accents, a cool font with nice headers and even color to really make it jump off the page. If you decide to try this yourself do not send it off without consulting other professional friends to see that it does not look tacky.

Deliver it in a nice envelope - Letters received at home in really nice envelopes always feel special, maybe sending it in a high grade professional envelope will show you are thinking about quality and presentation, something that is valued in every job.

Hand write the cover letter - A really well handwritten letter will show that you spent time and thought about contacting the company on a personal level. As long as they can see your CV laid out using a computer it will show you have both skills. Receiving a nicely written hand written letter always feels great so why wouldn’t it when writing to a potential employer.

These are new ideas that I have not really tried myself but I am trying to think of creative things that would have made me look twice when I was in the employer seat. Times are tough and innovation and optimism will get you through this much stronger than before. Keep it up and you will get yourself a good job and a better future.

I would love to hear any more ideas you have or any proven techniques.

Thanks for reading.

Tags: Getting an Interview, How 2 Make a Resume, Stand out from the Crowd, Unique Resume