How to Write a Targeted Resume

A resume is an important tool as a job seeker for landing in an interview. A resume is more than a document about yourself, your education, your hobbies, personal information.

A resume is a marketing document that is going to explain your potential to the employer; it needs to explain your expertise, your achievements, and your value to the employer. 

A targeted resume is a resume that is specifically tailored for a single job role.

First, you need to understand the difference between a CV and a resume. Both are entirely different terms.

Only if you have the clarity you’ll be able to craft the document accurately. A resume format should be chronological or functional (if you have a career gap or skill based job like a teacher or professor in education institutes).

Here is a table that clearly explains the difference between a curriculum vitae and a resume:

So for landing in non-academic job interviews, you need a resume. A CV is needed for academic positions explaining your whole career. Today nearly 97% of organizations use Applicant tracking systems (ATS) for their recruitment process.

The reason is fierce competition. A single job posting attracts a minimum of 250+ applicants, in order to pick the best candidates for organizations to use ATS. Your resume should pass through this machine to reach a recruiters hand. Not only ATS, if you directly email the decision-maker (recruiter or hiring manager) and if it lacks strong content, it will be kept aside. You need to be the 1st choice and not an option.

We also recommend you to just go with the simple word format for resume building as some of the ATS won’t recognize the modern CV templates which has separations and stylings. This might affect in the CV filtering process.

HERE’S HOW TO WRITE A TARGETED RESUME

#1 PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY FOR RESUME

The first section is your summary. Have you sat and thought about what would make a good summary? Almost 90% of the candidates either copy from Google or use the summary of a friend from their resume.

You need to think as this is the opening of your resume and only if this is branded the reader will move further down in the resume.

A good resume summary is a elevator pitch and helps the person who is reading understand about you and your expertise within minutes and that resume summary should be tailored in a proper way to attract the interviewer.

• Describe your strong character traits in a couple of words.
• Mention your current job title and professional experience.
• Use action words.
• Add info on your key achievements to prove you can deliver results when hired.
• Limit it to 3 or 5 sentences and use numbers whenever possible.

#2 ACHIEVEMENTS AND CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

This section is an important part of a resume as it showcases your career expertise to the employer. You may have achieved and target or reduced costs for the organization led a project, led a team or whatever. 

If you are a working professional, there will be something you might have done, but you cannot recall the points. Sitting down and writing a resume isn’t exciting but trust me, 95% of the resumes are thrown out due to lack of information.

ALSO READ – 5 Reasons Why Every Professional Must Have a LinkedIn Profile

#3 WORK EXPERIENCE

Now if you are an experienced professional, you need to include your achievements rather than just job responsibilities here, as the recruiter or hiring manager knows what responsibilities you would have had in that particular role. He/she would know how you added value to that role for that organization.

For example: If you are in charge of recruitment you could include something like “Contacted 55 candidates, 40 showed up and interviewed, 10 got an offer and 10 joined”.

Here, the recruiter understands your capacity, out of 55 candidates, 44 showed up, that’s close to 90% and all 10 candidates have joined that shows a 100% success rate.

So you will be a fit for the recruitment role. That’s how the work experience section works. 

In case you are a fresh graduate, you can include your internship and project experience. What challenges did you face and what action did you take? What was the result? Combine it into a point in a crisp way. Your point will be effective.

#4 ERRORLESS CONTENT

This is quite common in most resumes. Often you take the “n” number of hours to prepare a resume but while saving we fail to proofread for typos and spelling mistakes.

Most resumes getting rejected either by ATS or by a recruiter is because of spelling mistakes and typos. 

Most recruiters use this as a reason when a candidate cannot take an initiative to proofread and send a proper resume, then how the candidate will add value to the organization. Or if it goes through ATS, the system rejects the application due to spelling mistakes thinking of it as a different word.

#5 KEYWORDS

These words have been in the air since the boom of the internet era. Keywords are something that a person searches on the internet while looking for a solution. So what keywords have to do with a resume? 

A recruiter while preparing the job description keys down certain skills and qualities for the ideal candidate. For example, let’s take a marketing role.

The keywords may be: increase sales, e-commerce, product launch, etc. So although you might have done these works, if you lack the proper words, you might miss out on the opportunities.

#6 PROFESSIONAL CONTENT

As said a resume is marketing explaining your expertise, here is the place where you showcase your professionalism as you are either going to enter the professional world or you are a professional already, your content tone should speak the same way to boost your personal brand. Okay, but how, let’s talk about the same example of recruitment here.

Instead of – Contacted 55 candidates, 40 showed up and interviewed, 10 got an offer and 10 joined

Try this – Approached 55 candidates, 40 appeared for the interview, 10 received offers, and all 10 candidates were onboarded. 

#7 JOB SKILLS FOR A RESUME

This section is often ignored or little information is provided. The skills that you list in this section will help the interviewer understand your ability. 90% of the jobseekers stop with Microsoft Office, and Google Office. Sprinkle all your key skills, technical skills and make the resume a perfect one and be suitable candidate for the company.

Match your resume with the Job Description

1. Review the job description.
2. Pick out the key skills and keywords that are required on the resume.
3. Make it a point to include those resume keywords on your resume, if they are applicable.
4. Use it in the summary section, work experience, skills section, while explaining your project section.
5. Make a match with the job description and customize your resume to the job description before you apply for the job.

Here is what a good resume format should look like

A good resume format will need to have these sections to make through the recruiter’s eyes;

1. Headline- Job Role
2. Good resume summary
3. Career Achievements
4. Certifications or trainings
5. Work Experience- Last 3-4 jobs mention in detail
6. Skill Section
7. Education
8. Languages Known

CONCLUSION

These are the important key points you need to keep in mind while preparing your perfect resume. Also, you need to know that only if your profile matches 60-70% with the job description you are considered as a fit. So tailoring your resume accordingly is important to land in an interview.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND HIS FIRM – WRYTERS.INC

Myself a human resources executive turned entrepreneur. I help job-seekers land their dream job by developing their resume, LinkedIn profile and cover letter. Creating a resume isn’t exciting and sometimes you may get stuck while creating one. We at wryters.inc are here for support‌, talk to our specialists and fix your resume. Do contact us for more details.