Traditional new year’s resolutions tend to center on getting in better shape and kicking bad habits. But plenty of people also begin the new year with more career-centered resolutions: embarking on a new career path or finally getting around to finding a more fulfilling job.
In such cases, many folks simply dust off their old resume, add a few recent years of data and call it a day.
Yet there’s always that little sliver of doubt.
Have the “rules of resumes” changed? Are there new guidelines or trends to follow? Or, if you’ve already been casting your old resume out there for a few months without generating positive results, is it time to change the bait?
Here’s a list of questions you can ask to determine whether or not it’s time for a full-fledged resume reboot.
1. Is your layout due for a makeover?
While there is no perfect resume layout, there are still a few key layout conventions you don’t want to violate. For starters, virtually no resume (outside of an academic CV) should be longer than two pages — and many people, including experienced professionals, recommend limiting yourself to one page.
First off, less is more: a condensed version creates a sharper focus, cuts down on redundancy and better combats potential age bias.
The second modern layout guideline to remember: you generally want to avoid using columns, tables and other complex formatting elements since many resume scanners can have trouble effectively parsing them.
And last but not least, if your current layout is a bit drab, add some tasteful bursts of color to make it pop. While you don’t want to go over the top — packing your document with bright colors, infographics and other creative flourishes — you also don’t want your layout to be boring and vanilla.
If you don’t know where to start to inject some life into your layout, track down a free or low-cost online template that can rejuvenate your resume and add a little production value.
2. Are you speaking the right language?
Another critical aspect of modern resume construction is ensuring your document contains all of your field’s relevant terminology, jargon and keywords. Ultimately, keywords are the primary way that resumes get pulled out of an electronic stack, and in many cases your resume won’t even be seen by human eyes if it’s missing the right language.
To make sure your resume doesn’t get missed, carefully study job ads in your field and make note of any skills, strengths, software tools and other qualifications that are consistently requested. Are all of these buzzwords currently contained in your resume or did you possibly overlook a few terms?
What’s more, if you haven’t hunted for work in a few years, the vocabulary in your field may have changed, so watch for unfamiliar terms or new phrasing to incorporate.
If you’re in the marketing field, for example, you may need to include new terms like omni-channel marketing, customer journey mapping, marketing automation and net promoter scores to show you’re speaking the right language.
If your pre-2020 resume hasn’t highlighted your achievements in past roles, now might be a great time to address this issue.
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3. Could a typo be dragging you down?
I know, I know. While you’ve chuckled over others’ typo-riddled resumes, this simply couldn’t be an issue with your resume, right?
Alas, over half of all resumes contain some form of typographical error or formatting inconsistency — any of which could damage a person’s chances with a recruiter or hiring manager. In fact, there are nearly 60,000 resumes on Indeed.com alone that have the typo “manger” for “manager” (I’m assuming that the wooden crib industry hasn’t suddenly made a huge comeback).
Not long ago, I worked with a CFO who couldn’t figure out why they weren’t having more success with their applications — until I pointed out an egregious and especially distracting typo on the first line of their resume involving the phrase “initial public offering.” (Always be careful around “public”!)
Even if a massive resume makeover isn’t what you need right now, you might start out 2020 by bribing a few friends to go through your document with a fine-toothed comb, just to be safe and make sure you haven’t overlooked anything that could embarrass you publicly.
4. Have you truly captured your impact?
If you ask the vast majority of recruiters, hiring managers and resume experts, they’ll tell you it’s important to find a measurable way to quantify your accomplishments and showcase your impact at previous jobs.
Why is this so important? Because when you stop and think about it, almost all qualified candidates are comparable in terms of job history, education and qualifications. What really sets one qualified person apart from another is how they’ve applied their skills successfully on the job and what actual impact they’ve had.
Given this, if your pre-2020 resume hasn’t highlighted your achievements in past roles, now might be a great time to address this issue. This doesn’t always mean translating your experience into how much money you saved or made for an organization (although such data always helps!) but might instead relate to deadlines met, customers served, increased speed or quality or positive performance ratings. Whatever you’re measuring, be specific.
Heck, even just including a few simple storytelling details — clients you’ve supported, software you’ve used or the size of the budgets or teams you’ve managed — can help set you apart and rise above typical resume generalities.
Again, resumes are not an exact science. And even after reviewing the above considerations, it’s perfectly plausible that you decide your resume is already in great shape for 2020.
But if you do feel your document might be due for some freshening up, there are thousands of excellent templates you can find online with a quick search — and a zillion resume-writers you could hire to help put the “new you” down on paper.
Happy hunting and here’s to some good career tidings for 2020!