Know Your Skills A good place to start is by making a master list of your skills. The list helps you identify what kinds of job listings to target. Also, it will help you prioritize the skill keywords you will take from the job listing. It’s best to get it all on paper and save the cherry picking for later.
Mine the Job Listing for Skills Keywords
Highlight any skills the employer mentions
- When a hiring manager first looks at your resume, she will scan it for these keywords
- Put the most important keywords at the top of your resume
- Make other keywords eye-catching with embellishments
- If you’ve ever cut costs or increased revenue, add that information
Find Out if You Did a Good Job With Keywords
Dropping your tailored resume into a word generator like Wordle allows you to see which words you used the most
- If the most prominent words are not your keywords, rewrite your resume to increase the frequency with which you use those words
Tailored Resumes Get You Hired
It is necessary to customize your resume to match both the job listing and a hiring manager’s expectations
- Otherwise, you might just miss that golden opportunity
- About the author: Natalie Severt is a writer at Zety. She writes about how to create successful resumes to help job seekers land their dream jobs.
Identify Vital Skills
Try to find two to three other job listings similar to the one featuring the job you are applying for.
- If you find skills that are common across these listings, there’s a good chance they’re either mandatory or highly desirable for the role you are seeking.
Categorize the Remaining Skills for Perspective
The rest of the keyword skills should fall into one of three categories: Job-related, Transferable, or Adaptive
- Transferable skills are less important than the other types.
- Adaptive skills are the most elusive. The very nature of these skills makes them difficult to measure and demonstrate.
