5 Easy Resume Tweaks To Land More Interviews

 

Every day I speak with teachers about their transition out of the classroom.

One topic that comes up often in those conversations is the power of speaking to a specific target audience.

When it comes to job search, the curriculum is outdated.

And it’s causing you to fail in your transition to a more supportive and rewarding career.

You’re probably looking at various job postings and thinking “I can do that!” or “That’s right up my alley.”

So, you apply to every role that looks interesting.

And then wait for a response.

That never comes.

And you’re left wondering why you aren’t getting invited to interviews.

 

Here are the 5 reasons why:

 

1/ Wandering Generality

You’re using a generic resume that reads like a job description for every job you’ve ever held.

• Hiring managers don’t care where you worked as much as they care about the results you delivered.

• The more specifically you can show what you’ve done for others like them, the easier it becomes for your reader to make the connection to what you can do for them, too.

 

2/ Fluff & Stuff

Your resume is full of irrelevant information such as:

• References
• Full mailing address
• Colors & fancy formatting
• Skills and certifications that are not required

Relevance is important.

If you are certified in MS DOS programming, that’s nice. But not relevant to a curriculum designer or human resource position.  Be relevant. Forget the rest.

 

3/ Missing Links

Your resume does not include a link to your LinkedIn profile.

• This one is most often overlooked as you probably haven’t spent much time on LinkedIn since you’re so busy teaching every day, but it’s easy and super important because:

• EVERY resume reader wants to know more about you, and your LinkedIn profile is the best place to share this information easily and with intention

• Your profile should not be a carbon copy of your resume.
  • (more to come on this in a future blog post)

What about email?

• Including your email in your resume enables your reader to reach out to you directly if the mood strikes while reading. Make it easy by including your email at the top of your resume.

And that thing that goes “ring?”

• Be sure to include your phone number, too – your reader may want to speak with you, and you want to make that easy for them to accomplish. People still call people on the phone. Weird. I know.

 

4/ Spl Chek

The teacher in you is going nuts right now because you see the error in the previous line, right?

Put your red marking pen down for the moment and hear me out on this one.

If I had a nickel for every resume I’ve read that has at least one typo buried somewhere in the document I’d have, well, quite a few nickels.

Before sharing your resume with anyone be sure to:

• Spell check - but don’t trust that MS word will find your error.
• Print out your resume and read it silently.
• Then read it out loud.
• Give it to a friend or family member to read.
• Read it out loud again.
• Use the tools in MS word to have it read back to you aloud.

NOW you can pick up that trusty red marking pen and circle the mistakes, then correct them.

 

5/ The key to your words

Keywords are a requirement in every resume, but not in the way you might expect.

I’m not talking about filling your resume with generic keywords hoping to impress the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

You want to include keywords from the job description in your competency and skills sections, of course, but also weave them into the bullet points under your experiences to showcase the results you have achieved.

Doing so will improve the chances that your resume makes friends with the ATS and gets introduced to a human reader (your target reader!) for a once over.  Weaving the keywords into your bullets will also come across more naturally to your reader.

 

What Next?

 

Now that you know the 5 Easy Tweaks, you can act.

Review your resume to make the necessary adjustments.

Then move forward with confidence that you are making the best first impression possible and start landing more interviews.

Is your resume tweaked to the best of your ability but you’re still struggling to land interviews?

We can help with that.

Click here to learn more.

Onward!