How To Make Your Resume Stand Out?

It's easy to follow the herd and use word processing or resume writing templates to write a resume. When every candidate ends up using the same format, recruiters and human resources departments have a hard time finding the candidate's personality in the resume. Be original and design a resume that reflects your personality and work style. This is your first presentation of work to a potential employer and it represents the quality and originality of the work they can expect to see in the future.

This is not an arts and crafts project. Keep it clean, crisp, and neat. Save your smiley face icons for your E-mail; do not use them for bullets. You can sparingly use lines, margins, fonts, and font effects to differentiate your resume and focus the reader's attention on the most important text on the page.

Put the most important and applicable facts at the top. The most important thing about yourself that makes you a good candidate for the position should be in the top of the page. Once you've been identified as a qualified candidate, the rest of your resume comes into play. The reality of it is, when there are many candidates to sift through, even a single page resume may not get enough time for a full read-through. In these cases, the reader will look for phrases or words that immediately stand out as positive or necessary qualities for the position in question. You have to get the reader's attention first.

Use action words that convey your participation and role in the various parts of your experience that you highlight. Speak in terms of accomplishments and achievements. Quantify results when possible. Vary font effects to call the reader's attention to the most important facts. Use bolding, italicizing, underlining, and capitalizing to highlight areas of interest, but don't overdo it. Make sure the end result is clear and organized, not busy.

When you think your resume is complete, print it out and have multiple friends read it. Ask each one what three things in your resume stuck out. Most likely, these are the first three qualities about yourself that will catch your potential employer's eye. If you've structures your resume right, these should be the qualities that make you the person for the job.