The job hunt can be an overwhelming process, especially for a new applicant. You must sift through countless job postings, sign up with job search engines, and figure out what sorts of jobs match your skills and interests.
Once you’ve collected a number of jobs to apply for, you’ll need to develop a resume. Although your resume might appear to be a simple document, it tells a lot about you—information that employers will use to evaluate your application. The smartest job applicants put a lot of time into carefully developing their resumes, so why wouldn't you? We recommend following these five steps in order to prepare yourself to write the best possible resume.
1. Brainstorm a List of Accomplishments
Brainstorm a list of your accomplishments—tasks that you enjoyed doing, did well, and are proud of. Include education/training, volunteer experience, jobs, projects, school assignments, travel, and group or team activities. Focus on the outcomes of your efforts. Quantify your results if possible. Reflect on these experiences in short free-writes. You won’t use many of these on the resume you send out; however, reviewing these accomplishments and asking yourself why they are important can help you relate your experiences to each job’s requirements.
2. Interpret the Job Description
As you read job descriptions, ask yourself what exactly this employer is looking for in an applicant. Highlight all of the key words that indicate required and preferred skills, abilities, attributes, and qualifications. If an employer is looking for somebody who is innovative, punctual, and attentive to detail, then you’ll want to use these same or similar words on your resume. Using these key words, organize the job descriptions into similar categories based on their requirements; later, these categories will help you create a resume that matches each job exactly.
3. Identify Relevant Skills and Strengths
Now frame your experiences so that they connect your skills and strengths with those that are applicable to each particular job category. Use mind-mapping and other pre-writing techniques to strengthen those connections. Feel free to use as much scratch paper as necessary to develop your ideas.
4. Write Descriptive Phrases
Using action verbs, write short phrases to describe experiences that demonstrate your relevant skills. Expand on relevant skills and experiences with bullet points. Give yourself four to six descriptions per each experience so that you’ll have plenty to select from when you assemble the resume.
5. Create a Master Resume
Finally, organize all of your accomplishments and their descriptions in one basic resume document on your computer. Don’t worry if the document is long; the goal is to create a master resume from which you can select various elements to quickly prepare individual resumes for each job you apply to.
Of course, you won’t simply cut and paste from this list. You’ll need to do some last-minute revising before you can send away your application. But you can breathe a little easier knowing that you’ve already done most of the hard work. All you’ll need to do for each new batch of jobs you apply to is review the job descriptions and see how each element from your master resume applies. Then format the elements you’ve selected into a specific document to create the perfect resume for that particular job.
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About The Author: This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online college courses. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7@gmail.com