Writing a resume isn’t an easy task when you’re looking to find a job, but when you finally have one written, you feel as if the weight is lifted off your shoulders. Now it appears that all you have to worry about is sending it out with a well-written cover letter to job openings. But not so fast. There’s still more work to be done with your resume. It’s great that you have one resume, but like a good shirt, one size does not fit all and won’t fit all job applications. A resume is supposed to demonstrate your relevant experience to the job you are applying for, but your resume may not exactly fit that job. Having more than one version of your resume is essential to getting your foot in the door and getting an interview.
This may seem like a lot of work in the beginning, but there’s no reason that it has to be. Once you have your basic resume, you can tailor it to the job posting you are applying for just as you would your cover letter. If you’ve had a few jobs in your lifetime, you know that the same skill set isn’t necessary for each job. For example, a buyer for a retailer knows how to get the best price from the supplier, but a sales manager knows how to get that product sold to a customer. While they have a similar set of skills, these roles are different in the way that they use these skills. For arguments sake, let’s say that you had both of these jobs in your career history. If your resume is more tailored to the skills of a buyer, would you be sending that same resume to a company for a sales management position? No, and vice-versa. It is imperative that you tailor your resume to the job you are applying for because any human resources director who receives a resume that doesn’t fit the skills of the job ad is not going to be calling you for an interview.
Don’t fret though. Your whole resume doesn’t have to change. The areas you want to focus on tailoring are your statement of interest, if you have one, and your skill section. If you are applying to a buyers job, you don’t want your statement of interest to indicate that you want a sales job, and likewise in your skill set, you don’t want to highlight your sales skills when applying for a buyers job. To tailor your resume in the best way, you can look at the job advertisement and highlight the skills that your potential employer has stated that they desire in a candidate. Once you have a short laundry list of what the job requirements are, you can easily re-write your skills to fit better with a job and are more likely to be noticed when your resume and cover letter come through the door. It may seem like a lot of work for one job application when you have so many that you want to apply for, but tailoring your resume to each specific job you are interested in makes it more likely that you will be noticed by the human resources representative filling the position.
Your resume is your selling point, so sell yourself! Don’t ruin your chances of getting hired by sending the same generic resume to every job posting you apply to. Tailoring and editing your resume to fit a job advertisement will give you a greater chance at an interview and make your job search more effective in the long run. While it may seem like a lot of work, the payoff in the end is worth all the effort.