Write a Targeted Resume

In order to maximize your chances of landing an interview, you should tailor your resume to each potential job. Tailoring your resume involves providing information about your knowledge, skills, abilities, accomplishments, and experience that is relevant to a particular job posting. By sending a targeted resume, you can demonstrate to recruiters that you fit their desired profile.

Steps

Understanding the Details of the Job Posting

  1. Read each job posting thoroughly. A job ad should provide valuable information about the company, the job, and the qualifications that the ideal candidate possesses. You can use this information to create an effective targeted resume, so pay attention – read the entire posting carefully, and note where your skills and experience match the ad.[1]
    • For example, a job posting for a marketing manager may state that the successful candidate must be able to create a marketing strategy for a new hotel. If you have experience developing and implementing new marketing strategies in the hospitality industry – and especially if you have this experience in relation to hotels – you should take note of that and plan to highlight that specific part of your background.
  2. Highlight the most important job duties. As you read a job posting, take the time to highlight important duties associated with the job. When you begin to construct your targeted resume, you will be able to go back to the ad and quickly scan for this key information.
  3. Highlight required and desired qualifications. In addition to noting key job duties, you should also highlight or underline all required and desired qualifications, including education, skills, and experience. Successful candidates will probably meet most or all of the “desired” qualifications, so these are nearly as important as “required” qualifications for creating a strategically tailored resume.
    • Note that although many job ads will list required and desired qualifications in formal sections, many will scatter them throughout the posting. Be sure to read the entire ad.
  4. Determine implied qualifications for the job. In addition to the qualifications listed specifically in the advertisement, a job may also carry implied qualifications – those that you can glean from reading other parts of the ad and thinking about the position as a whole. You should plan to include implied qualifications on your targeted resume as well.
    • For example, a particular job posting for a marketing manager may state that a job duty is “conducting email marketing” but include nothing related to email marketing in its required or desired qualifications. You can still conclude that skills and experience in this area are desirable; these are implied qualifications that should appear on your targeted resume.

Writing a Targeted Heading and Summary Statement

  1. Create a heading that reflects the position you are seeking. The first and most obvious place to tailor your resume is right at the top, with your heading and summary statement. Start by including the name of the potential job in a heading immediately underneath your contact information. Enlarge the font slightly, and put the heading in bold to separate it from the rest of the information.
    • If you have never held a position exactly like this one, place the words “Qualifications for” just above the heading. This explains to recruiters that although you do not hold an identical job and haven't in the past, you intend to show that you are qualified.
  2. Provide three to five essential skills directly under the job title. Under your new heading, list a few of your most significant skills. These should be tailored to the particular job, so think carefully about the advertisement, and decide which of your qualifications seem most crucial. Separate these skills with a slash.
    • For example, if you are applying for a marketing manager position, you might write: “Marketing Strategy / Customer Behavior / Search Engine Optimization”
  3. Write an effective summary statement. The next part of your resume should be a summary statement: a short paragraph that highlights your relevant skills, experience, and accomplishments. The purpose of this statement is to show the recruiter that you are an ideal candidate and persuade that person to continue reading. Keep the summary statement short; if you go much longer than five sentences, recruiters may not read it. At the same time, try to include:
    • relevant “soft skills” like analytical thinking or interpersonal communication
    • a basic outline of your relevant years of experience, job titles, and industries (such as “Ten years of experience as a marketing manager for the hospitality industry”)
    • notable awards and recognition (such as “Leadership of Excellence award winner”)
    • education and certifications
    • key accomplishments (such as “Developed global marketing strategy that increased sales by 50%)

Creating a Tailored Skills Section

  1. Define your relevant hard skills. Hard skills are teachable skills required to do a job successfully. These include “email marketing,” “search engine optimization,” and “software sales,” for example.
  2. Determine your relevant soft skills. Soft skills are personal attributes that define how you accomplish certain tasks or hard skills. They are more difficult to teach and tend to be related to individual personalities. Examples include “great communication skills,” “analytical thinking,” and “team player.”
  3. Position these skills underneath the summary statement. Your skills section should appear after your summary statement, allowing recruiters to see quickly that you are someone worth interviewing.
  4. Use a bulleted list. List relevant hard and soft skills on a bulleted list. Keep in professional looking: use simple bullet points, dots, or dashes.
    • Consider using two or three columns for your skills section. Doing so keeps the section from appearing unnecessarily lengthy.
  5. Limit each skill to a few words. Whenever possible, keep your description of each skill limited to one to three words: “marketing strategy,” “communication skills,” and the like.
  6. Aim to include five to fifteen skills. You need at list five to ten skills, but try not to exceed fifteen; you'll only overload recruiters and diminish the impact of your skills section. This section will vary from job to job (and depending on your individual background), but in general, ten carefully chosen, highly important skills are ideal.

Tailoring Your Experience Section

  1. Include each relevant job you have held during the past ten years. Beginning with your most recent position, list each company, job title, and dates of employment. You do not have to include jobs that are not relevant; marketing management recruiters are unlikely to care, for example, that you delivered pizzas part time for six months, and including this kind of work will only clutter your experience section with irrelevant information.
  2. Write a brief description of your duties for each relevant job. The short paragraph that accompanies each job listing should also be tailored: for each past position, construct two to five sentences that explain your experience and connect it to this potential job.
    • For example, you might write, “Manages a global team of software sales representatives. Provides quality leads to increase sales and meet team goals.”
  3. Add bullet points listing your most attractive accomplishments for each job. Consider your most outstanding accomplishments or duties that are relevant to the potential job, and list these in bullet points to make them easily readable. This is a good place to include quantifiable results as well.[2]
    • For example, you might write: “Increased sales by 30% in six months through a new customer relations strategy.”

Listing Relevant Training and Education

  1. Consider all relevant training and education. List your formal education – a bachelor's degree, for example – but don't forget to consider on-the-job training or certification as well. If any training you have completed is relevant to the potential job, include it!
    • For example, you may have completed a leadership training program while employed at a different company. If you are applying for a supervisory position, this training is relevant.
  2. Leave your high school education off your resume. Even if you have no further formal education, including your high school education is unnecessary.
  3. Include a bachelor's degree regardless of the focus. No matter what job you are applying for, a bachelor's degree is relevant. It demonstrates a certain level of education, even if the field is far removed from the potential job. If you have a B.A., include it on every resume.
  4. Evaluate advanced degrees on a case-by-case basis. Master's and doctoral degrees should be included only when relevant. If you are applying for a position as a marketing director and have a doctorate in marketing, include it; if you are applying for a position as a marketing director and have a doctorate in biology, consider leaving it off.

Including Additional Relevant Information

  1. Include all awards and recognition. Awards and recognition are always relevant; they demonstrate that you are able to excel and stand out among other employees. If you have awards like “Employee of the Month” or “Leadership Excellence Award,” include them, even if they do not seem directly related to the potential job.
  2. List relevant memberships in professional associations. If you are a member of any association that is relevant to the potential job, include that on your resume. This shows that you are already committed to the field.

Tips

  • Resist the urge to save time by sending identical resumes in response to different job postings. Tailoring a resume to each potential job does take time, but it will pay off in the long run.[3]
  • Don't neglect basic copy editing and revision. Every single resume you send out should be perfect: clean, professional looking, and free of typographical errors.

References

  1. ↑ [v161390_b01]. 29 April 2020.
  2. ↑ [v161390_b01]. 29 April 2020.
  3. ↑ [v161390_b01]. 29 April 2020.
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