How to completely mess up your resume. There’s something that are way out of date, take way too much time to get to a level that we feel is just right, and really and truly, become more of a game here lately, to just ever updated one the last decade or so anyway. A fine combination of numbers, keywords, and the right little iffy points that you have to pay attention to has gone up so much that it’s a little bit ridiculous and it probably needs, no it does need an entire re-vamp and a re-haul and a re- other stuff. But until we get to that point, we have to deal with it.
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I’ve seen some programs online that you put your resume into it, and it comes back with a score with how much you match the job posting that was available. And for a position that would never work, but I am highly qualified for, put in all my stuff, I got a 76%. Which, if I was HR, I probably wouldn’t call anyone that isn’t above 95. So, whether or not those websites and those software tools are a good thing, doesn’t really matter anymore.
People are reduced to a number, and until you meet those numbers, your resume really doesn’t matter. So what you can do, is exactly what I did to mess up and foul up my resume, to be completely worthless. I haven’t updated it in a while, because I really haven’t needed to, but the value, the information that I’m giving you is still sound. And that is, as much as I hate to say it and as much as you probably hate to hear it, you have to tailor your resume to every single job posting, or at least job posting type, that you’re applying to.
I recommend doing your job submissions in aggregate. So get ten or so jobs that you’d like to post to in similar categories. So get the three that are the technical analysts positions, and get the three that are in the data entry positions, and get the three that are in the lead technical positions, and make one resume for each one of those. I know you can probably only get three or four bullets per major job on the resume for the three or four examples that have on your one page of resume.
I guess you can do two nowadays, depending on how much experience you have, but it’s okay to make eight or nine bullets per job and then just pull out the ones that are most relevant to the job description of the one you’re applying for. You have to treat each job individually and as unique beasts if you want to apply to them any type of success.
Now, of course the overall chances of getting a nilly-willy callback on a submission alone are less now that it’s so much easier to submit and automatically check things, so it’s best to go through whatever networking channels you have. However, you want to increase your chances of getting a resume hit, and making it look good, you’ve got to tailor, and you’ve got to come up with plenty of information and bullet points, and selling points, about yourself that you can move around with minimal work to tailor it to each job that you’re applying for.
Yes, it’s going to take really long that first time you do it, but every time after, when you just keep pertinent ones, it’ll be that much easier. And it really only takes about an extra 30 minutes per submission. I don’t know if you’ve ever been able to do a job submission on these new complicated websites in under an hour, but I would say a good pace is somewhere between one and three submission per night, depending on how much you’re going at it.
But don’t feel too bad about it, spend a little bit extra time making it that much more special, because you’re showing how much care. You won’t foul up your resume and you can start optimizing the rest of your job hunting methods. That’s all I’ve got for you today. Have a good one and get your resume in order.