Resume tips from a recruiter’s assistant
I’ve been working as a recruiting assistant for a few months now and I wanted to share tips for job hunters. As a recruiter’s assistant I’m the one that scours Monster and CareerBuilder and reads your resume first. So here are ten things that make your resumes a little better (100% I have rejected some resumes that were impossible to read before). These are all fairly general so I think should help everyone
1. 1-2 pages max PLEASE I BEG YOU. It is rare that I really feel you need more than that, but if you feel you do please proceed with caution. (I’m looking at you engineers with your 7 page resumes that include actual tables. I will you find you and I will fight you)
2. Microsoft templates may not be the most flashy but they are almost always readable and I appreciate that
3. KEYWORDS! Pepper your resume with as many relevant keywords as you think apply. And I do mean put them in your resume. Just putting them in your skill profile on Monster doesn’t mean anything to me if I can’t figure out where you have that keyword experience. If you can’t think of keywords it can help to look up example resumes or even “*job* keywords”. Of course, only add them in if you can back them up with your experience.
4. Try not to use bullet points with single words. If you’re using bullet points at all use them with sentences. I’ve asked people to write better resumes when they have too many single word bullet points.
5. Those indeed proficiency tests mean nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. Except that they almost always ending up adding another page to your resume and please see point 1.
6. Cute, colorful resumes don’t mean much to me as I print everything in grayscale. Bolds, italics, and underlines catch my eye better once I’ve printed them out. (Caution, this might be different for more artistic jobs which I don’t generally look for)
7. If you have a large gap on your resume for a decent reason, fill the gap. You don’t have to put in took time off for school since I’ll see that in your education section. But if you were injured, taking care of sick family or children, etc you can briefly mention that.
8. Put start and end dates for each position. You don’t have to put down why you left, I will ask.
9. Put your phone number & City + zip at the top of your resume in an easy to see spot. I do not need your exact address and I DEFINITELY DO NOT NEED YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER.
10. Upload your resume to job sites. Please do not just copy and paste your resume as it will be formatted horribly and I’ll hate you for making me open up word to copy your resume into. Job sites sometimes suck and ruin the formatting of your resume anyways but its better than txt format style resumes with no paragraph spacing.
