Your Resume and First Impression: Elevate your career prospects with expert guidance from Barracuda Staffing.
When you submit a resume for a position, it is the first impression that the hiring manager will have of you. It’s imperative that you make sure that it reflects the best of what you’ve done, and is clear and easy to read.
Start with Experience
When creating your resume you should begin with all relevant experience. You can choose to place your jobs in order of relevance or recency. Both are acceptable, but you may find that ordering your positions by recency may place your most relevant experience lower down. When hiring managers are glancing over your resume, they may pass over the most relevant experience if it doesn’t show up higher up on your resume. Placing your positions in order of relevance will ensure that hiring managers see them.
Use Bullet Points
The hiring manager will be going through an excessive amount of resumes for the position you apply for. If you’re rambling on in full paragraphs about what you accomplished, your resume will not get read. Be sure to utilize bullet points to discuss responsibilities, outcomes, or data. It’s much easier to read when there are hundreds of resumes that the hiring manager is looking at. It also leaves room for you to expand on the information in your interview. If you tell the hiring manager everything about your position before you’ve interviewed, you’ll sound like you’re just repeating your resume.
Clean Formatting
Gathering all the information that you need on your resume may seem like a lot. But when you break it down into a format, it looks much cleaner. At the very top of your resume, you should have your information: name, address, email, phone number. Then you should go into your experience – in the order that makes sense for you. Following your experience, you should include any education you’ve had – college, high school, or trade school is important to note for your position. At the bottom you should list any awards or achievements you have received or volunteer work that you’ve done.
Whatever you send in will help determine whether or not you get the interview. Keeping your resume organized, relevant, and to the point will help the hiring manager see that you’re someone to interview further.
5 General Tips
- Keep it to one page
- Use data where you can
- Leave yourself talking points for the interview
- Keep it relevant
- Spell check, spell check, spell check!
Your resume serves as your initial introduction to potential employers, a vital first impression that can make or break your job prospects. At Barracuda, we understand the critical role your resume plays in your career journey. Our expert guidance ensures that your resume stands out, capturing the attention of employers and opening doors to exciting opportunities. Trust us to help you make a lasting first impression and navigate the path to success.