Tailor Your Resume to the Job

Wondering about how to best tailor your resume? Here are four of our top tips:

1. Tell the most compelling story about yourself first.

Rather than waiting to describe your most persuasive skills until later in your resume, move them to the very beginning. While sometimes this will mean starting your resume with “Work Experience,” you could also begin it with a different section header, such as “Summary” or “Qualifications.”

2. Write a resume headline

A resume should be a very brief phrase that encapsulates who you are and what you could offer the company. You should write a new resume headline for each job to fully demonstrate your applicable skills. Here’s a sample resume headline: “Successful Personal Finance Advisor with Strategic Planning Expertise.” Your summary or profile section is similar to the headline, but the headline should be succinct and placed directly under your name and contact information – like a subtitle that makes your readers want to learn more about you.

3. Choose the right sections of your resume to update.

When matching keywords from your resume to your job posting, make sure the sentences flow naturally. To do this, choose the resume sections that can most naturally incorporate new keywords. Ways to do this include breaking your Work Experience into multiple subsections, such as “Relevant Experience” and “Related Experience,” or even “Finance Experience” or “Other Work Experience.” You can also highlight your most relevant qualifications in your “Summary” section.

4. Use exactly the same language used in the job posting.

You don’t want to get crafty in your resume by choosing synonyms of prominent words from the job posting. For the Hiring Manager to see your fit for the position, it’s best if you use the same language as the job description to the extent possible. This means pulling keywords that you can incorporate directly into your resume.

5. Emphasize skills in your bulleted sections.

Often job postings will include desired soft skills that can be hard to demonstrate. While you certainly want to emphasize achievable outcomes in your resume, you can also use your third or fourth bullets describing each position to mention skills related to the position.

The best way to create a compelling, tailored resume that fits the job posting is by letting an expert suggest helpful tweaks. Career Moves, LLC has helped more than 500 accounting and finance professionals find their dream jobs by assisting them in creating application packages that clearly demonstrate their fit for the position. Get in touch today to find out how we can help you.