Six Steps To A Polished & Relevant Resume
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Giving your resume a polished, professional look and feel proves to employers that you are detail-oriented, take your job search seriously, and know what it takes to stand out. Sloppy or boring resumes (e.g. too much white space, generic wording, errors, etc.) are the ones that end up lost somewhere in HR or in the trash. But, there are several steps to make your resume stand out as polished and professional. Here are just some of them:



1. Remove first person language. While it is okay to refer to yourself in the first person (e.g. I, me, my) in your cover letter, this is a no-no in resumes. For example, instead of “I was responsible for 10 helpdesk employees”, simply change to third person: “Led staff of 10 helpdesk personnel”, which sounds more refined and professional.



2. Replace conversational or lazy language. Conversational language does not translate well to a resume. For example, instead of saying, “Filled out balance sheet reports for accounting and gave them to the management team”, which is clunky and informal, say something like, “Successfully completed and delivered balance sheet reports to accounting management.”



3. Remove irrelevant information. This includes your karate black belt, your position as leader of your church’s singles group, and even your high school diploma (which is considered a given in today’s job market). Including items like these can take away from your other more relevant and impressive skills and experience!



4. Proofread and edit out unnecessary content. You only have a few valuable seconds to get a hiring manager’s attention so make it count and edit out wasteful wording! As English poet Robert Southey said, “It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”



5. Ensure proper bullet placement. We’ve all seen documents with bullets placed practically in the middle of the page, or too far off to the right, which can be distracting. It also sends the message to employers that you pay little attention to balanced formatting in a Word document, which is very basic to most office jobs these days. You can adjust bullets by selecting them and sliding the tabs on the top ruler of your document to the left.



6. Make your email address professional sounding and easy to remember. This is especially important if your resume is sent as a hard copy. Employers simply do not want to send an email to party_girl5217@email.com. Choose an email address that is a variation on your name and has as few numbers/symbols as possible so they know exactly who the email is going to and there is less room for error in typing your email address (e.g. SallySmith4@email.com).



It is more important than ever to look at your resume as a marketing tool, and an attractive, professional resume is what will set you apart from your competitors. Do everything you can to make yourself stand out!