3 Ways to Fix Your Resume

3 Ways to Fix Your Resume3 Ways to Fix Your ResumeYour resume is the first impression you make to an employer, networking contact or your boss when youre asking for a raise. It should represent your skills (hard and soft skills), your experience, education and your brand and is a critical piece to any job search or request for promotion.Most professionals know how important a resume is, but many of them struggle to ensure it tells the right story. Why is it so hard to make sure your resume is in good shape? Keeping your resume up to date and truly effective for your search is difficult becauseIt requires being detail-oriented, which is bedrngnis everyones strength.You have to be objective about yourself, which is not always easy.You have to sell yourself, and many people hesitate to brag about themselves.See The 25 Best Jobs of 2018.All of this can feel daunting and like too much pressure, especially when you consider very few business leaders have a solid and defined personal brand, and employers spend 10 to 15 seconds scanning a resume before they decide to consider or toss a candidate. Here are three ways to fix your resume to ensure that it properly represents you and stays out of the toss pile.First of all, develop your personal brand. If you arent sure what your personal brand is, start by asking friends and family members what makes you unique. What are your strengths? Many times we discount what comes naturally to us, and that impacts our confidence and ability to sell ourselves. You could also ask co-workers or teammates what they appreciate about you. See Tips for Surviving a Career Transition.Once you have a better understanding of who you are and what you have to offer the professional world, you can start to form your branding statement. Your branding statement is composed of four parts who, what, how and why. Who do you serve or who is your target market? What unique value do you provide? How do you deliver? Why should they believe you? When you have formed your branding statement, you will want to include it on your resume. For example, it could be part of your professional summary. Your summary lets fhigkeit employers know right away who you are and your expertise. The next thing to watch out for is formatting mistakes. Formatting mistakes can includeUsing too many font styles and sizes. Pick one font and size for the heading and one font and size for the body of your resume. This keeps your document easy on the eyes. Inconsistency when using tabs, punctuation, spacing and bullets. Follow the same rules throughout your resume.Margins that are too small. Page margins should be a minimum of 0.6 inches. leid using enough white space on the page. White space is your friend. It can be used to emphasize or play down information. Without white space your resume becomes difficult for potential employers to scan. Underlining information. We recommend that you skip underlining, since this can distort information when scanned in to an applicant tracking system. You can use formatting properly to play to your brand. You can do this by making sure your name stands out. Dont be afraid for your name to be larger than the rest of the content. Once you have decided on a header that properly represents you, make sure to use the same header on your cover letter. Remember, these documents are your personal marketing materialsSee 8 Ways Millennials Can Build Leadership Skills.Finally, when working on your resume, keep in mind that it is not a one-size-fits-all document. You will want to tailor your resume to each job you are applying for to ensure you highlight that you have the relevant skills and expertise needed for the position. If these items are not clear to a potential employer, no matter how great your resume looks, it will be put aside. To make sure your resume is tailored to the position you are applying for, analyze the job description to find the skills, expertise and any key words and phrases used to des cribe their ideal candidate. That is the information you will use to make sure your resume is concise, targeted and relevant to that specific role. We recommend creating a master copy of your resume and then saving other versions of your resume for different positions.