Making your story come alive on your resume is a challenging task most people find daunting and exhausting. Does your story fall flat as soon as it hits the paper?

Many of you have amazing stories to tell about your professional achievements. If you could sit before employers, you would surely convince them you are the best candidate for the position. You would talk about the most significant improvements you have done at previous companies. Also, you would share the ideas you have to immediately target the pain points of the potential employer.

Before you have the opportunity to secure these meetings, you must express all of this on your resume.

• Write about your most relevant success stories in brief, two-line bullet points that include what you achieved and how you accomplished it.
• Think about what you are so eager to tell potential employers and include these stories on your resume.
• Include a short 4 to 5-line summary on the first half of the first page of your resume. The summary should include the most important qualifications your target employer is seeking (this is expressed in the job ad.).

Writing your resume is an art. Conveying the most important points of the stories you want to share in writing is where many people struggle. Writing about yourself is also not an easy task. Resume writing is a process that includes several drafts before having a final copy worthy of sending to employers. Even after having a good final copy, you should continue to update your resume once every three months to include new and relevant achievements. Also, your resume should be personalized to the particular job you are targeting.

Why do only about a handful out of at least 100 candidates get called for job interviews?

Applicant Tracking Software

As the majority of us know, companies use applicant tracking software to recruit new talent. This means that before your resume is read by a human being, it is scanned by a machine. To increase your chances of having your resume pass this scan, you must include words from the job ad on your resume. This is another reason why you need to narrow your target positions and focus on the top three. If your resume is crafted to target one position or a few similar positions, the words the ATS will search for will naturally be included on your resume.

Visual Appeal

Most resumes lack visual appeal and simply blend in with hundreds of other resumes. Depending on your target industry, your resume should be designed to draw an immediate and positive connection with the industry and position it is targeting. For instance, if you are targeting the information technology industry, having a couple of charts would make your resume stand out. If you are in the sales and marketing industry, highlighting your sales achievements and presenting them in charts would be ideal.

Close Match

When employers search through resumes, they are looking for those who appear to be a close match to the needs they have to meet and problems they need to resolve. Some resumes are too general and those get quickly dismissed. For this reason, I have stressed in many articles to narrow your job search to your top three positions and create a resume to match them. Title your resume with the position you are pursuing. If you are seeking a position that differs from your previous ones, then include the words “target position” before the name of the position to avoid deceiving the hiring manager.

This is where the layout of your resume becomes crucial. The layout needs to make your resume easily readable. Your resume should have sufficient white space and just the right keywords as section headers. These keywords must resonate with the employer. At this point, the employer has probably eliminated close to half of the resumes received.

Was your resume one of the handful that passed these three major steps?

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Yuleni Pulido: Professional Resume Writer
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