Whether you are a recent graduate, unemployed or just looking for a career change, creating a powerful resume and job searching can be daunting. An effective resume highlights your strengths and tells potential employers you are the ideal candidate, consequently improving your chances of winning that dream job.

The Beginning of a Resume 

This is the most important section. The average resume gets about ten seconds before recruiters decide whether they want to continue reading. You have a brief window of time to garner their interest, so you have to create strong professional profile statement or an objective statement.

Now, many people are torn between creating a professional profile at the start or an objective statement. 

Objective Statement

There are only three situations when you want to use objective statements if you are a student, a new graduate, if you’re just re-entering the workforce after a long-extended absence, or if you made a career change. Other than that, you want to go with a professional profile statement.

Don’t write a generic objective statement. It’s important to write an objective statement specifically tailored to each employer. After looking at the job description you’ll have an idea of what they’re looking for in a candidate. 

Write about your desire to contribute to a company/industry. Here’s an example for a customer service role.

‘Seeking a customer service role in a challenging environment where I can apply and develop my experience, knowledge and interpersonal skills so I can contribute to (insert employer name) success.

Professional Profile Statement

This where the ‘wow’ factor comes in. Introduce yourself to the hiring manager and talk about your background and experience. Here’s an example of a professional profile for a hotel manager.

‘A seasoned hospitality manager with experience in creative leadership and proven ability to develop strategies that generate revenue, build dynamic teams and provide a red carpet guest service experience to meet the public’s increasing demands.’

You’ll want to expand on this a little, but the idea is to promote yourself (without exaggeration or misrepresentation) through your experience and knowledge right from the start. 

Skills & Highlight of Qualifications

For the hard skills or technical skills, you want to mention expertise required for your role or industry. For example, an accountant is expected to possess the following skills; analyzing accounts, financial forecasting, administering payroll, etc. 

You also want to be aware of the soft skills that may give you an edge or even determine whether you’ll get the job. Communications skills are key, those include both verbal and written. The ability to convey information and articulate your thoughts is crucial. 

Critical thinking is another soft skill that you may want to include. It will tell the employer you are able determine the relevancy of a task or issue and that you have the ability to demonstrate good judgement.

Interpersonal skills is a term that is present in so many resumes, but many applicants don’t expand on this. Leadership, teamwork, conflict resolution, mediation and problem solving are all skills employers love. 

It’s important to carefully read the job description so you know the skill. But don’t misrepresent yourself, if you don’t possess a skill, leave it out of the resume because it can get in the way of you being successful in that role.

Professional Experience

It’s all about accomplishments, but many applicants have a tough time actually creating accomplishment driven statements. If you are a sales rep seeking a position in your industry, it’s all about dollars and cents- for example, you can speak about the total revenue in sales you generated in a year/quarter. 

For some positions talking about accomplishments may not be that simple. For instance, if you are an administrative assistant or a teacher it’s gets a little harder to quantify accomplishments. So here are five questions that will help you create an accomplishment driven statement for each employer. 

1. What is the biggest accomplishment you achieved at this role? 

2. Did you improve or implementing new processes or any new innovation or products within the company?

3. Did you save your employer money?

4. Did you win any awards? 

5. Did you do a better job than the person that had the job before you? If so, in what aspect?

If you can answer these questions, you can probably come up with an accomplishment driven statement.

This may sound obvious but proofread your resume repeatedly to make sure there are no typos and your grammar is on point. Typos are the most common error. You’d hate for avoidable mistake to get in the way of your dream job, so don’t be afraid to have a friend or family member read over your resume, four eyes are always better than two. 

Keep it simple, organized, clear and professional. Avoid using fancy fonts, graphics and pictures. 

Remember, an effective resume is crucial for opening doors to job interview opportunities.

Take advantage of a free consultation and have your resume reviewed by experts today!

Finally, resume writing is not just about stating your work history, it also tells potential employers what you bring to the table, so make sure you stand out.