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Crafting a Standout Resume: Employer-Backed Strategies for Success

Resume

In today’s competitive job market, your resume is often the first impression you make. While most understand its purpose, many struggle to create one that truly captures attention. This guide, filled with expert employer resume advice, is designed to enhance your resume, make it memorable, and significantly increase your chances of moving past the first application stage. Even if you consider yourself a resume pro, a quick review of these insights can only strengthen your application. After all, as you’ll see, meticulous proofreading is paramount! 

Here’s what you’ll gain from this guide: 

  • Employer-Advised Tips: Understand exactly what companies are looking for and gain insight into the resume screening process from the recipient’s perspective. 
  • Simplified Do’s and Don’ts: Clear, actionable guidance on creating an impactful resume. 

Get ready to transform your resume!

Tip 1: Read, Proofread, PROOFREAD!

Magnifying glass over paper

Typos and grammatical errors can undermine your credibility as an applicant. Thoroughly proofread your resume to ensure it is error-free – especially technical words and program names. Don’t just trust AI or grammar apps to check for you, have a trusted friend, advisor, or mentor review to make sure your story and skills are coming across clearly.

Be consistent with your spelling and capitalization. For example: CyberSecurity, Cyber Security, and Cyber-Security are all correct. Choose one and stick with it.

Additionally, do not just use AI alone to write your resume for you! It often lacks the human touch and unique voice that only you can provide. 

Tip 2: Quantify to Stand Out 

Just listing all your accomplishments doesn’t let a potential employer understand the depth of your work. When you have a resume that quantifies your achievements, it effectively showcases your value and increases your chances of landing your tech job. By integrating statistics and numbers, you provide concrete evidence of your impact, making your accomplishments tangible and believable. This shifts the focus from what you did to the positive outcomes you achieved. 

Black and red number

For example: 

  • Instead of: “Developed software features” 
  • Write: “Developed and deployed 15+ software features, contributing to a 10% increase in user adoption.” 
  • Or switch: “Worked on bug fixes.” 
  • To: “Resolved an average of 15 critical bugs per week, ensuring system stability.” 

Tip 3: Make sure your words are key. 

ATS keyword tip

Many recruiters and companies use AI and tracking systems to screen resumes. It is the first barrier between your resume and the employer. Carefully analyze the job descriptions that interest you; Strategically incorporate relevant keywords from the description throughout your resume in a way that makes sense. Don’t just keyword pack. This helps your resume get picked up by Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and increases your chances of getting noticed. 

Consider this: If a company needs UX Developers experienced in surveying, simply listing “surveys” under “experiences in UX Design” as “Amongst my experiences in UX Design I have used surveys…” is an example of keyword packing. 

Instead, focus on: Specifying a specialty in surveys and integrating it into your profile naturally: “Amongst my experiences in UX Design, I have dedicated effort and time to maximize the user feedback I have received from surveys.” 

Tip 4: Take it to the Tailor. 

To tailor your resume for a specific job of interest is more than just throwing in keywords from the job description, as the earlier tip mentioned. It’s equally—or maybe even more—important to highlight the skills, experience, and projects you’ve worked on that are most relevant to the job you’re applying for. And don’t forget to tailor your professional summary to the job description.

Tailor resume

Keep it to 2 paragraphs or less or make it 5 of 6 bullet points. Our recruiters at PamTen are great tailors to make your resume a perfect fit for your dream job.

Tip 5: Showcase Your Projects

Show projects

To bring your resume into the spotlight, include a section of your personal projects, hackathons, open-source contributions, or any other relevant technical work. Provide brief descriptions and links to repositories, portfolios, or live demos, if available. That extra insight makes you more memorable and can help you get that job. 

Tip 6: Ready, Set. Action! 

When detailing your accomplishments, roles, or responsibilities, always begin each sentence or bullet point with a strong action verb. This seemingly small detail can powerfully capture and advance your professional story. 

Action resume verbs

For example: 

  • Instead of: “Working with other employees to fix bugs, reducing execution time by 30%.” 
  • You can write: “Collaborated with other employees to fix bugs, reducing execution time by 30%” or “Reduced execution time by 30% by collaborating with other employees to fix bugs.” 

Tip 7: Highlight Technical Skills

Tech skills resume

When you’re applying for a job in tech, they are going to want to know your skills. You may have been training in many apps and systems but haven’t been using them in recent jobs. That’s OK. Create a dedicated “Technical Skills” resume section to highlight your proficiency in programming languages, software, tools, and technologies. Be specific and list the versions you are familiar with 

Tip 8: Don’t forget the Soft Skills 

Soft Skills are crucial in the tech world and are often underestimated when making a resume. While your technical prowess gets you in the door, your soft skills determine how well you collaborate, lead, and ultimately succeed within a team and organization. Don’t just list soft skills on a resume in a separate section .Show how you used these skills to achieve results. Think back to tip 6, one of the examples displayed a soft skill of collaboration: “Collaborated with other employees to…” 

Soft skills resume

Tip 9: Keep it Clean – The Resume that is. 

Clean resume format

Clean resume formatting is concise and easy to read. Use bullet points and white space to improve readability. Your resume is the first impression an employer gets of you—a well-formatted one makes it a positive one. If you aren’t the best at formatting a paper or document that is being presented, Canva can easily help.

A simple search for “Resume Templates Canva” will reveal many customizable options. Aim to keep everything on one page, if possible, 2 pages maximum. 

Tip 10: Honesty is the Best Policy 

Your resume is the greatest way to put forth the best of your accomplishments but do so honestly. Exaggerating or fabricating your achievements can lose the trust of potential employers and only dilutes your real value.

Honesty in resume

These ten employer-backed tips are designed to ensure your resume makes a strong impression.

By applying these IT resume strategies, you can confidently stand out from other job applicants, even if you’ve previously felt unsure about your resume’s effectiveness. And if you’re ever unsure, our Talent Management team is here to help.

Article by Joseph Germanos and the PamTen Team 

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