Refocus and Reuse Your Resume

Here’s a question I hear regularly: “I want to send out a resume that’s targeted to the job posting, but I don’t want to start writing from scratch every time. What shortcuts are there?”

I’ll give you 2 ways to quickly customize and submit a resume targeted to each job posting.

1) Change your objective to match the title of the advertised job.

This is simple, effective, and takes 30 seconds.

Example: If the job posting advertises for a Training Coordinator, change your resume’s objective to read as follows — “OBJECTIVE: Training Coordinator, where 7 years of training experience will add value,” or something similar.

Key: Make the first words on your resume match the title of the advertised job. This creates an instant rapport between you and the hiring manager.

2) Reverse engineer the job posting.

Pick the 3-5 top Qualifications or Requirements from the job posting and address them in your resume. This is more editing than writing from scratch, and should take only 5-10 minutes.

Example: Let’s say the top 3 requirements for the position are as follows: 

• Compelling and articulate speaker.
• Coordinates training programs to develop employees’ skills.
• Exceptional writing ability.

Make sure your resume proves your skills in speaking, training and writing.

The easiest way is to include a Qualifications section, right after your Objective, where you can list your 3-5 most-valuable skills. All you have to do is change the order and/or wording so that one bullet addresses each of the top requirements for the advertised job.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 6:40 am and is filed under resumes. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.