Best resume tip in your opinion? (letters, applying, interview, employer)

[Caldus]

My personal favorite resume tip has been: tailor the resume to the specific job as much as you can. Now, don't lie and put all kinds of extra keywords that are also in the job description. If you actually do have the experience, make sure you relate that experience to the experience desired in the job description. In other words, don't make the 'perfect' resume in your eyes only to be sent out to a bunch of people who don't care for it because they have no way of knowing how much you qualify for the particular position. I have tons of variations of my resumes. Yes, it can be quite dizzying trying to keep track of it all, but in the end a lot of pieces of it are the same. I never ever apply for a position until I feel that I have listed all position-specific relevant experience on there somewhere. That pretty much means that I have to tailor the resume every single time I apply for a position.

I feel that this tactic has won me the most attention so far. I mean step in the shoes of the employer or whoever is in charge of filtering through resumes. Why do they care if you have X amount of years of experience in Y domain if the job doesn't require it? Get rid of it! Chop it off your resume. It's all about the particular audience. Do nothing other then talk about what is relevant to them. Don't leave a bunch of unwanted details on the resume. I know if I were them I would start glossing through it and get irritated. Some people out there might disagree with me, but I feel that this is the single best thing you can ever do to increase your chances of getting the phone call.

Why do I think this works so well? While I have a job right now, I have applied for only 4 positions in total in the last month, and I already got one phone interview out of it. I spent a lot of time looking over each position and carefully determining what the employer is really looking for in someone. My belief is that 10 carefully thought out resumes trumps 100 randomly sent resumes. What do you think?

[SouthBound47]

Focus on accomplishments, not duties.

[janman345]

The way I crafted my resume was with the outlook that I am the professional and my employer is for the most part inconsequential, all that really matters is the projects I worked on, what I did, contacts I made, etc.

As far as chopping stuff off your resume, I personally do not have enough meaningful experience in multipule fields where I can just add stuff and take stuff away (unless you are 50 years old and changed careers somewhere along the line and are trying to go back to your old career), I guess it depends on if you are a jack of all trades or a master of one (maybe 2 if you are focused and smart). For me personally I would say I am on the way to being a master of one so if I were to chop stuff off my resume to work at mcdonalds I basicly would not even have a resume other than my name and email. If you have so many jacks you might want to start focusing on becoming a master of something. Being a jack of all trades might get you low level jobs quicker but you will never make the big bucks doing that and the way I see it is I am going to roll the dice to be fat and happy or freeze to death the next winter cycle, my personality will not allow me to go from min wage job to min wage job living in slums. If an employer is intimidated by my BS in chemical engineering and a PE then I dont want to be there becuase that place is likely full of clowns and incompetence, I have one resume that I have been crafting since college and now with this recession I keep it updated every 3-6 months and keep a repor going with people that I have sent it to in the past and they are generally excited to hear from me even if they dont have a position open but someday they might and if I still have a job else where I can negoitate for some fatty money. A professor once told me that the best negotiating position is to be negotiating for something you dont really need you just want, dont wait until something becomes a need because thats when you get hosed, sometimes its hard to avoid when you are first starting out but you want to get out of that position as soon as possible.

The key is to start looking for jobs and building contacts way before you even think you might be laid off, get full blown letters of reference from high experience respected members of your field and hand craft each cover letter to address the company you want to work for.

[Caramelboo]

I agree about tailoring your resume in order to fit the qualifications of the job position you are applying for. I also got rid of my objective statement and included a summary of relevant skills, which I change often in order to fit the skills for the job position I am applying for. I have had a few interviews within the past month or so after making these changes.