5 pieces of advice I've given during resume reviews
Experience comes first, use active language and more
This week I’m bringing back one of my first subscriber-only posts from the archive focused on resumes and how to breathe new life into yours if it needs refreshing.
During free weekly career coaching sessions I’ve offered, I regularly helped with resume and cover letter reviews.
Here are five pieces of advice that often came up during those discussions.
Experience comes first
The most important thing you can share in a resume is your relevant experience. Make sure this is prominent up high and easy to find.
This means you could skip the objective or preamble paragraph at the top and save that information about yourself for the cover letter.
If you’ve been out of school for more than a couple years, consider moving your education down to the bottom. Any additional skills or awards can go down there, too.
Details, details, details
If you’re a reporter, go beyond saying that you wrote or produced stories. Tell hiring managers how many stories you crafted each week, say that you completed them on deadline (if that’s true) and definitely include what your stories were about. This could mean highlighting that you interviewed or profiled key officials, put together features on trends in local dining or broke an investigative scoop.
If you work in audience engagement, you should also include details on special projects. Try to quantify your work where appropriate. Did you increase engagement on a specific platform by 50%? Did you start an Instagram account and grow it by 2,000 followers? Say so where appropriate.
You can also strategically link to some of your best stories or projects. I would recommend doing this 3-5 times to maximize effectiveness.