Many Americans are on the job hunt.
There are job seekers who lost a job in the rash of tech layoffs in the past few months, those eager to ramp up pay with a job switch, and retirees who have decided to unretire.
One thing they should all have in common: a new resume.
“Over the last five years, the employment landscape has changed, and so has the way job seekers write resumes,” Eric Ciechanowski, a career expert at LiveCareer, an online resume and job search consulting service, told Yahoo Finance.
Job hunting takes pluck, but writing a resume — particularly if you haven’t done one in a number of years— can be, in a word, paralyzing. There’s no way around it, though, as your resume is your calling card and your sizzle reel.
I reached out to a handful of experts for their insights on constructing a resume for today’s hiring landscape and have included some of my own as well.
The challenge is to grab attention straight away.
Once your resume reaches a human resource manager, more than a third of them spend less than a minute initially looking at it, according to a survey from CareerBuilder. Nearly 1 in 5 spend less than 30 seconds.
A two-page resume is the norm
Your resume is an advertisement, not an obituary. In other words, it should hit the highlights, not list all your life accomplishments.
Resumes have expanded in recent years. The average resume has nearly doubled from one page to two, and the average word count has increased from 312 words in 2018 to 503 in 2023, according to a recent report from LiveCareer.
That said, cherry-pick your professional experience. What employers want to see is your most recent 10 to 15 years of experience. No one wants to read every one of your job entries, for instance, if they run over a two-decade or longer career.
Bundle your earlier experiences into one tidy paragraph and skip dates. Use only the work history that’s germane to the job you’re applying for now.
The automated-hiring technology known as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) carves out the throngs of applications and resumes employers typically receive for a single open position, so grease the wheels.
Eliminate college or high school graduation dates. Remove jobs that lasted less than six months. Avoid quirky job titles, which could jettison you from a recruiter’s search criteria. “Wordsmith,” for instance, is unlikely to show up in an ATS search for the specific keyword “editor.”
Where to add value
The core sections of a resume are your contact information, professional summary, work experience, and skills and education. But the number of job seekers who tack on extra sections has doubled, per the LiveCareer report.
I recommend highlighting your specific skills before you launch into your experience. More than a third of human resource managers said they preferred having skills listed first on a resume, according to CareerBuilder.
Focusing on the skills relevant to the job you’re applying for up high delivers the “why you should hire me” message before you start cataloging previous jobs.
After all, what you can do for them today is what an employer really wants to know. And if you’re looking to change careers or have a gap in your work history, it’s even more critical to focus on your skills, not your prior positions.
The top three or four skill categories mandatory for the job you’re targeting should guide what you list. These include hard and soft skills, certifications, and key accomplishments. Coding languages now dominate hard skills sections, while time management tops the list of soft skills, followed by customer service and critical thinking.
“There’s greater emphasis on soft skills,” Amanda Augustine, a career expert for resume-writing service TopResume, told Yahoo Finance. “Although companies appear more willing to upskill — or reskill — employees to fill the technical skill gaps at their organizations, their recent hiring efforts often focus on finding candidates who can bring the right combination of soft skills to a role, which are considered more challenging to teach.”
What that means is your resume needs to include skills such as adaptability, effective communication, and conflict resolution, and an ability to collaborate with colleagues to solve problems, meet goals, and add value to an employer or client, Augustine said.
Focus on numbers
It’s no longer enough to simply list your current job duties. “It’s vital that you focus on quantifying your accomplishments,” Marc Cenedella, founder of the career site Ladders, told Yahoo Finance.
Instead of writing, “Oversaw the accounting team,” you should write something like, “Developed and implemented a new accounting department training program that increased productivity by 19% in six months.
I call this section your CAR story, which stands for challenge, action, and result. Numbers, statistics, and percentages get attention. These are quantifiable results that no one can quibble with when you’re touting why you’re a good hire.
Learning is hot
Add recent training, education, and certifications to emphasize your professional development and willingness to learn. Staying on top of trends and technologies can ramp up your odds of successfully landing a job.
Create an “Education and Continued Learning” section on your resume to highlight any courses or training programs you’ve completed, as well as certifications, advanced degrees, or other credentials you’ve earned, Augustine said.
Create a small section toward the bottom that lists your technical proficiencies in your field.
Ability to work remotely
On the surface, employers seem to be pressing hard to get workers back to the office, but the reality is that hybrid work is the workplace sweet spot these days.
“It’s important to show employers that you’re able to thrive onsite or from home by highlighting previous telecommuting experience, the accomplishments you achieved while working remotely,” Augustine said.
The soft skills to tout are self-discipline, tech-savvy, and time management, plus your ease with using various digital tools to communicate and collaborate with coworkers.
Keep it simple and customize
Stick to a simple layout with consistent formatting and a clear hierarchy of information. Avoid the use of images, unusual fonts, or custom bullet points. Carefully proofread your resume for typos or grammatical errors that could confuse the system, Augustine said.
Use a font size between 10 and 12 for the body of your resume and 14 to 16 for the headers throughout your document. “You want to make sure your document is easily skimmable with enough white space between its content,” she said.
There’s no such thing as a one-and-done generic resume anymore. Your resume needs to be bespoke for each position you’re applying for. That means incorporating keywords from the job posting and highlighting the skills and experience the employer is seeking.
Consider your pronouns
It’s more commonplace nowadays for job seekers to add their preferred pronouns to the top of their resume. If you have a unisex name or identify using nongendered or nonbinary pronouns and want to make this clear to employers, you can choose to add your preferred pronouns to the top of your resume, typically under your full name with your contact details, Augustine added.
Recent experience is the ticket for job seekers over 50
The further along you are in your career, the less relevant your earlier work experience becomes. Focus on elaborating on the positions you’ve held in the past 10 to 15 years that are related to your current job search.
“Avoid the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ approach,” Augustine said. “Although you may have held multiple roles throughout your career, your resume should be tailored to support your current career objective — rather than providing a generalized summary of your entire work history.”
Parting thoughts
Spelling and grammar are the biggest mistakes on resumes and can cost you a job interview. So proofread it once or twice, and then have a friend read it.
Skip “References available upon request.” Of course they are.
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist, and the author of 14 books, including “In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in The New World of Work” and “Never Too Old To Get Rich.” Follow her on X @kerryhannon.
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