How to Customize Your Resume for a Specific Job

When looking for a job, you want to make sure your resume sells you as the person most qualified for the position.

What your resume looks like matters. If it is unorganized or the font is too small or too large, it probably won’t get read. Resume samples found here will show you professionally designed formats that you can use as a template for your own.

When applying for different jobs, you want to make sure your resume stands out from all the others and shows that you are the most qualified person for each position.

How can the same resume be perfect for many different jobs? By tailoring and customizing your basic resume for each different position. You can write your own resume or get help from services such as Skillhub’s professional resume writers.

Here are tips on how you can customize your resume for each job:

Create Your Core Resume

Make sure you take the time to create a strong resume outlining your competencies, experience, skills, and education. This is your starting point.

Analyze the Job Description

Review the job description carefully. Take notes and jot down the keywords used when describing the job title, skills, necessary experience, duties, and other requirements.

The keywords highlight specific skills like customer service, programmer, and project manager. Pay attention to the location of the keywords and which ones are closer to the top of the description as they are the most important.

Tweak Your Title

Change the title on your resume to match the title in the job description. For example, if your generic job title is “Administrative Assistant” and you are applying for a position in a doctor’s office, change your title to “Medical Administrative Assistant.”

Modify Your Objective

If you have included an objective in your generic resume, add some of the keywords from the posted job description.

Customize Your Skills

Look through your notes of relevant keywords for each job. Read all the content on your resume to see where you can revise your wording to incorporate those specific keywords.

For example, let’s say you are an accountant applying for a position that specifically states as a requirement, experience with QuickBooks. Change your text to read “QuickBooks Expert”.

As long as your skills are a match for the job, swapping the language in your resume with the keywords in each job should be relatively simple.

Edit Your Job Descriptions

Some people think they have to include everything they ever did for each of their jobs. This is a mistake for several reasons. First of all, you don’t want to have a resume that is too long.

Secondly, if you tell everything in your resume, what will you be left to add during an interview? And lastly, you only want to highlight the most relevant duties and responsibilities for each of your past jobs.

Referring back to your notes on each specific job, you will want to focus on the responsibilities and duties that correspond to the job for which you are applying.

Add Sections Where Relevant

Using bullet points can be helpful when listing your skills, experience, and accomplishments. Consider creating new bullet points to cover more of the relevant keywords for each specific job.

You might want to add content that matches the requirements of the job that you might not have thought of in creating your generic resume. Of course, you want to make sure you actually do have the real experience or skill set.

Your best tool for customizing your resume for each job you are interested in is the job description you see online or in the newspaper. The hiring manager or recruiter takes the time to make sure it is clear exactly the type of candidate they want to hire.

If you expect them to search through your resume to see if you are a good fit, rest assured that isn’t going to happen.

Going through this process for every resume you submit might seem like a daunting task. However, the more times you go through the process, the easier it will become.

Customizing each resume to match the specific requirements for each job is your best chance of showing potential employers that you are the most qualified applicant for their job.

The better your skills match the necessary requirements of a specific job, the better your chance of getting to the next step of looking for a job. That step is to get an interview.