Your Complete Guide to Writing a Resume That Gets You Noticed

Crafting a resume that gets you noticed and urges employers to consider you for a particular role is tricky. You can’t think of preparing a single draft and using it to apply for the job everywhere. This approach won’t help you. In fact, using the same draft for a job application across various organizations may work as a counter-factor.

Given this, it is essential to prepare a resume that is laser-focused on the role and highlights your measurable achievements. It should also come in a clean, scannable format that captures the attention of hiring managers and ATS (applicant tracking systems) alike. However, many applicants fail to craft such a resume.

The primary reason behind applicants’ inability to craft a standout resume is their lack of awareness of tips and tricks regarding the proper formatting of this crucial document. This article navigates you through all of them to help you get noticed and increase the likelihood of getting hired. So, let’s start!

1. Pick the Right Resume Format

The biggest mistake most applicants make while crafting a resume is choosing the wrong format. You must opt for a format that highlights your strengths and minimizes shortcomings so that ATS and hiring managers see the best side of you. 

Here are details about a few formats and when they can benefit you:

Chronological

A resume that is shaped in accordance with the chronological format focuses on listing your work experience and achievements in reverse chronological order. It starts with your most recent work experience and moves backward till the very beginning.

Key features of this format are:

• Reverse Order
• Descending timeline
• Necessary details about each work experience
• Emphasis on professional career

This format works best for:

• Seasoned professionals boasting steady work experience in the relevant field.
• Applicants aiming to reflect growth in their profession with a clear career path.

Pros of the Chronological format are:

• Most recruiters are familiar with it and prefer it over other formats.
• Clear and easily scannable structure.
• Ability to demonstrate the applicant’s work history and achievements.

Cons of this traditional format are:

• Inability to hide frequent job changes
• Undermines specialized skills and creativity.
• Failure to work well for recently graduated candidates.

Functional Format

This format works entirely opposite to chronological resumes. It highlights transferable skills, knowledge, and areas of expertise instead of work history. Skills that are relevant to the job are placed above work history to make recruiters take notice of creativity, knowledge, and skill set, rather than focusing on professional experience. 

Here are some details about this format:

Key features of the functional format for the resume are:

• Emphasis on skills.
• Skills are grouped based on their nature.
• Relevant accomplishments are listed under each skill category.
• Work experience is discussed briefly.

Functional format works best for:

• Career changers who try to reflect relevant transferable skills.
• Recent graduates who rely on skills and have limited work experience.
• Applicant with employment gaps aiming to shift focus from unemployment periods.
• Professionals with diverse work experience across multiple industries.

Pros of this format are:

• Ability to shift the focus from employment gaps.
• Works well for career changers.
• Demonstration of potential for future roles.

Cons are:

• Employers may see it as a tool to hide something, such as poor job performance.
• Recruiters find it difficult to get the necessary knowledge about career progression.
• ATS may find it challenging to retrieve relevant information from it.

Hybrid Format

Hybrid format, as the name suggests, combines the pros of chronological and functional resumes by highlighting career progression and skills alike. It begins with a detailed summary reflecting the skills of a candidate or a section demonstrating their professional profile. A section, which lists work experience and relevant qualifications reverse chronologically, follows it. 

Here is what you should know about it:

Key features of the hybrid format are:

• Skill-centric beginning
• Reverse chronological listing of work experiences.
• Detailed skills sections with categorization, with examples from the career.
• Flexibility and customization.

It works best for:

• Seasoned professionals
• Candidates with employment gaps.
• Career changers.

Pros are:

• Balances skills with work history.
• Allows ATS to retrieve essential information easily.
• Provides context and reflects versatility.

Cons include:

• Complex structure.
• Increased likelihood of redundancy.
• Strategic formatting is needed to ensure conciseness.

2. Structure Your Sections Clearly

Once you have chosen the right format based on your professional background, it is time to clearly structure the sections of your resume. 

Here are some important sections you should work on without missing out on anything noteworthy:

Header and Contact Information

A typical resume starts with personal information of applicants, which is why this section is also referred to as the header of the document. 

Here are some important elements you should include in this section.

1. Full name.
2. Contact information, such as phone number and professional email.
3. Address featuring the names of the city and state, without further details.
4. Links to LinkedIn profile, online portfolio, and personal website.

Professional Summary

Here comes another important section, which requires you to summarize your entire work experience, knowledge, expertise, and capabilities you offer. Keep in mind that you have to cover all this information in no more than 4 sentences without undermining clarity and conciseness.

In case you find it challenging to condense this much information, then worry not, as you can utilize a summary maker to execute this task. Such a tool will analyze the given text to accurately extract unnecessary information, condense sentences, and enhance clarity without compromising the original intent, providing you with a bespoke summary. 

Career changers and entry-level applicants should consider adding an objective instead of a summary.

List Key Skills

Listing relevant skills is not as challenging as most applicants think. You just need to go through the job description multiple times to figure out what employers require from an ideal client for a particular role. 

Now, follow the given practices to ensure an impeccable skill section.

1. Make a bulleted list of up to 10 skills that mirror the job description.
2. Mention hard skills first.
3. List soft skills after mentioning the hard skills.

Add Professional Experience

Follow the reverse chronological order while listing your work experiences. 

Here are some to-dos you should follow while doing so:

1. Add company name, location, job title, and dates.
2. Make 3 to 6 bullet points per role.
3. Reflect your impact and accomplishments for each role.

Provided Details Regarding Academic Qualifications

Employers don’t always focus on skills or career progression. Sometimes the key factor that makes them reach a decision is hidden in the section where academic qualifications are listed. 

Here are some practices you should follow to ensure clarity:

1. Follow reverse chronological order while listing your qualifications.
2. Start with the most recent one and work toward the earliest.
3. Mention degree, institution, and date of graduation.
4. Only mention GPA if it is above 3.5 out of 4 or similar for other grading systems.
5. Don’t forget to list relevant honors or projects.

Additional Sections

Although optional, you should consider adding these sections if you find something relevant that can help you get noticed. 

These sections are mentioned below:

• Certifications and Licenses
• Volunteer Experience
• Publications
• Speaking Engagements
• Technical Proficiencies
• Languages

3. Tailor Your Content with Keywords

The importance of keywords is not limited to the web or search engines. They benefit you if you appropriately embed keywords into the content featured in your resume. The ATS will definitely notice them and pass your resume on to the recruiters for further consideration. 

Here are a few things you should do to make it possible:

1. Analyze the job description to identify action verbs and required skills.
2. Naturally mirror the language used in the job description and use exact phrases.
3. Emphasize relevance and integrate top keywords into the skills section.

4. Ensure Impactful Bullet Points

Nobody likes to read lengthy chunks of text. So, ensure an easy-to-scan layout for your resume. 

Adding bullet points will help you make it possible. 

Here are some practices you should follow while doing so:

1. Use the STAR (Situation/Task, Action, Result) tactic to reflect your impact.
2. Start with strong action verbs, such as optimized and led.
3. Keep bullet points restricted to 20 words.

Using the STAR formula enables you to briefly set context, describe your work, and quantify the impact.

5. Ensure Optimization for ATS

While the core purpose of crafting any resume is to get hired, you should also aim to get past the ATS. It is the first barrier that may eradicate your name from the list of potential hires. Given that, you must follow a few practices.

1. Ensure standard headings and avoid unnecessary experimentation.
2. Avoid adding graphics, imagery, text boxes, headers, or footers.
3. Stick to common fonts while keeping the text size limited to 12 pt. at max.
4. Submit your resume as a Word document or a PDF, unless specified otherwise.

6. Consider Best Practices for Formatting and Designing

In addition to following all the aforementioned practices, you must also stay mindful of best practices for formatting and design to ensure passage through ATS and easier readability. 

Here are a few of them.

1. Keep your resume restricted to a single page.
2. Add another page only if you have more than 10 years of experience.
3. Ensure consistency in margins and line spacing.
4. Thoughtfully use text bolding.
5. Avoid lengthy blocks of text that may undermine whitespace.
6. Ensure easy readability by using bullet points instead of paragraphs.

Proofread and Polish Your Resume Before Applying

Here comes the final step: proofreading and polishing your resume before applying for a job. 

Overlooking or undermining the importance of this step may work as a counter-factor. 

Here are some tips to ensure a refined and impeccable resume:

1. Catch awkward phrasing by reading content aloud.
2. Quickly find and fix grammar mistakes.
3. Seek help from a trusted peer for clarity and impact review.
4. Double-check dates, company names, and contact info.

Ensuring a perfect resume is not a cakewalk. You need to invest your time and effort into the process to come up with a highly optimized document that gets you noticed and increases your likelihood of getting hired. So, follow all the suggested practices to ensure a cohesive personal brand to make a strong impression on recruiters. We wish you luck with your job applications!