Simple Resume

Simple Resume Do’s & Dont’s

January 4, 2019 By Simple Resume Team

In our recent article, we talked about making a grand first impression. People that can make great first impressions generally find themselves in better situations and living better lives. Meaningful conversations, long-lasting relationships, and even employment opportunities are all known to be generated from the beauty of a great first impression. These impressions are critical in the hiring process, as a job interview is the first impression to a hiring manager and the resume is the first impression to an applicant tracking system (ATS). To round things out to make sure your 2019 career goals come to fruition, here are some Resume Do’s from the Simple Resume Team.

Use Bullet Points

Bullet points are quintessential elements that are needed within a basic resume format. Choosing to create a bulleted list of your accomplishments within your resume instead of writing in paragraph form helps to create aesthetic appeal and break up your text. With bullet points, you have the opportunity to organize, highlight, and separate your skills, accomplishments, and job duties. Make sure you do your research and create your basic resume outline with bullet points containing industry-specific action verbs to ensure you are making an argument for yourself as a good hire!

Optimize Your Simple Resume

Resumes have to be optimized strategically in order to make it to hiring managers’ desks. This is due to the fact that applicant tracking system (ATS) technology is now being implemented by a substantially great amount of companies worldwide. The key to optimization is plugging in keywords to ensure that your resume stands out amongst your competition (see how our services can create a simple and professional resume for job search effectiveness). Study the job description, take note of specific keywords that are mentioned, and make an effort to include them in your resume.

Quantify Your Accomplishments

Career accomplishments have to be quantified in order to be considered qualifiable for many of today’s positions. Noting and detailing your stats in the duration of your employment gives hiring managers an idea of your dedication and work ethic. It shows a level of commitment and promise as an employee. Quantifying your accomplishments can mean a ticket into the hiring manager’s office for an interview! Quantify your resume as best as you can will give you the best chance at landing employment opportunities.

Check your Grammar

By far the most obvious and worst mistake you can make on a simple resume. Now that you’ve misspelled words such as “organized” and “directed”, you can kiss that job goodbye. It’s not that the hiring manager doesn’t believe you can spell. We all make mistakes. He believes that you don’t know how to check your work and will submit a project even if it contains fallacies. Do your resume and job aspirations a favor and check your grammar, it may end up being a job offer in the end.

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A first impression is everything. People that are skilled at making great first impressions generally find themselves living better lives. A great first impression can generate meaningful conversations, long-lasting relationships, and even employment opportunities. First impressions are critical in the hiring process, as a job interview is the first impression to a hiring manager and the resume is the first impression to the applicant tracking system (ATS). Having said that, in our edition of Resume Do’s and Don’ts, here are some Resume Don’ts from the Simple Resume Team.

1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd Person

How about “no person”. A simple resume should never have any pronouns within its text. This is a simple resume law. The resume should serve as a summary or an introduction of you as an applicant, not a narrative or autobiography. Ex: In his previous position, Cory analyzed complex reports and developed a company strategy for optimal efficiency. When writing his accomplishment, instead of beginning the sentence as “Cory analyzed complex reports…”, “He analyzed complex reports…”, or “I analyzed complex reports…”, Cory should start the sentence off as “Analyzed complex reports…”.

Unemployed

Don’t give any impression that you were unemployed for any period of time. Unemployment raises red flags to hiring managers. They may wonder what have you been doing in the meantime, why you were unemployed, and your overall work ethic. Use a filler such as any personal project or volunteer work that can show that you were busy and cover any employment gaps.

“References Available Upon Request”

Employers will ask for references if they need them. As an applicant, you are already expected to have references available upon request. Implementing this phrase in your resume takes up a valuable amount of space. Avoid stating the obvious.

Negative Words In Your Simple Resume

This should go without saying. Listing your limitations will automatically disqualify you from any position in the job market. Avoid saying what you “can’t” do and focus on what you “can” do. Detail your accomplishments and capabilities to elevate your image as a great potential hire.

Too Much Info

Including any sensitive personal information is not only an instant disqualification, but it doesn’t do any good in your job hopes. In fact, it can do you much more harm than good, as you will leave yourself vulnerable to identity theft and someone having your information in their hands. Don’t include your date of birth, social security number, or personal interests in your resume. Keep it simple and avoid doing this on your resume.

Simple Resume For Job Search Proficiency | Get Hired

October 23, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

In creating a simple resume for job search proficiency, there are both tricks and challenges a candidate can face. Let’s say you’ve started a job search. After you’ve made it through the initial phase of searching for the right role, your dream company posts a job opening in your field. Now is the time for you to utilize your skills and experience to capitalize on the dream opportunity. Here are some simple tips to better your chances of getting hired.

Input Keywords And Phrases Into Your Simple Resume For Job Search Proficiency

Within job postings, the position’s job description always will contain keywords and phrases that the hiring manager is looking for in a potential candidate. To better your chances at landing an interview, study this information and write down the main keywords. Be sure to add the keywords and key phrases into your resume simple and relevant enough to not only pass applicant tracking systems (ATS), but to catch the eye of the hiring manager.

For example, if the company wants someone with “B2C marketing experience” who is “a quick learner” and “highly attentive to detail”, be sure to include “quick learner”, “B2C marketing experience”, and “highly attentive to detail” in your simple resume as long as the skills are applicable to your skill set. This practice will assist you in two ways. Using keywords will help you create the best simple resume for job search proficiency by helping it pass through the ATS and helping tailor your simple resume to fit the specific position at hand.

Though it is important to use these keywords throughout your resume, be careful not to over-saturate your work resume with these keywords, as hiring managers will catch on to this. Implement your keywords where you see fit in your simple resume for job search effectiveness and a smooth flow.

Research The Company

First, begin by researching the company’s culture, mission, core values, and history. Take detailed notes and work this information into your memory. Research the company’s online presence to get a visual understanding of the company’s social efforts, events, philanthropy, and presence. Knowing all of this information will impress recruiters and hiring managers alike. However, your research does not culminate there as this is only the beginning.

If you are given the opportunity to interview, it is important to know who will be interviewing you. If you are provided with a name or job title of the interviewer, take it upon yourself to look the interviewer up on LinkedIn or a Google Search. Find out the interviewer’s background, tenure, interests, and academic experience. Knowing this information when it comes time for interview day will thoroughly impress your interviewer and not only show that you have researching skills, but also show that you have the ability to take initiative.

Reach Out

If you are able to identify who the hiring manager is, take full advantage and reach out personally. Inform the job poster that you applied to the position and confirm your interest in working for them. Email the job poster to schedule a call to speak about your qualifications for the role.

Research and find employees on LinkedIn who work in the same position or similar positions to the one that was posted. Reach out to these employees and offer to job shadow or ask if they can provide more detailed information on the role. This will help give you an idea of what it is like to work for your dream company. This could also possibly help in creating a buzz and getting your name around the company.

Ask Questions

At the end of the interview, the interviewer will ask you if you have any questions. Failing to ask any questions in an interview is a major red flag and will pull you out from the candidacy pool. Prepare a list of detailed questions based on your research and steer away from asking about salary as you may come off as uninterested in the actual work itself. Inquire about the company’s culture, core values, performance metrics, and whether or not the interviewer can see your skills and qualifications as a match for the position.

Being an employee of your company of choice is a rewarding experience. Workers tend to be happier and work better when working for a company they love. Incorporate these tips into your game plan to boost the probability of getting hired by your dream company.

Why Hiring Managers Prefer A Simple Resume

October 19, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

In the hiring world, writing a simple resume has become a widely accepted practice by recruiters and hiring managers alike. Before a resume can be seen by potential employers, they are required to go through a screening process for proper vetting.

Once resumes pass the initial screening that is implemented by the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software, they are then left in the hands of hiring managers who will sort through the pile of resumes to uncover the top candidates for the position.

The process of bringing in a beneficial new hire to an organization can come with many challenges for hiring managers. Thus, working to create a simplified resume can prove to be beneficial for prospective candidates in the talent pool. We have compiled the top 3 reasons why hiring managers prefer a basic resume design that makes for a great resume.

Short & Sweet

Recruiters and hiring managers would prefer not to have to read through extensive, lengthy resumes. A complex resume can come off to a hiring manager as unappealing, boring, and difficult to read. If the first initial reaction to your resume from hiring managers is a negative one, chances are that you will be eliminated as a potential hire.

A short and concise basic resume design allows hiring managers to key in and focus on your keywords immediately upon obtaining your document. In fact, it makes it even easier for a hiring manager to locate your keywords and professional accomplishments, as they will not have to read and sort through a load of content.

Aiming to create a short resume that’s to the point will ultimately lead you to creating a work resume well-optimized to appeal to the eyes of the hiring managers who will be reading your document.

Quality Information

Too often, a work resume lacks enough substance and detail to make it stand out as a high quality resume. The proper resume for job searching will serve as a visual representation of “quality over quantity”, as the resume should communicate information about your career background that is valuable, meaningful, and beneficial to the hiring manager’s decision-making process.

The simplicity of a basic resume design will allow you to key in on implementing only pertinent information to the position at hand. In order to make a push for a high quality resume, you must scrutinize your own work and make an effort to determine the information that will serve to be most useful to your potential employer.

Time Saving

It has been said that the average recruiter takes approximately 6 seconds to look through a candidate’s information to determine if they are suitable for the open position.

Many hiring managers will typically spend a little more time in attempting to uncover the potential of a job candidate to aid hiring efforts. However, according a 2017 study conducted by Glassdoor, the average hiring process in the U.S. takes approximately 23.8 days. An effective hiring manager will aim to cut as much time as possible from the hiring process to ensure a quick hire.

A resume simple enough for readability works to eliminate the need for an extensive amount of content when writing a simple resume, which in turn allows hiring managers to save time.

Practicing writing a simple resume can create opportunities for job seekers, whereas complex, drawn-out resumes greatly diminish your chances of gaining employment. The goal of writing a simple resume is to keep the content short, simple, and to state your value. Some of the best basic resume examples portray a resume document that is short and packed with quality information so that it will save employers a lot of time. Click here for a downloadable simple resume template optimized for ATS and hiring managers.

Classic Resume Mistakes To Avoid

October 2, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

A resume must catch the eyes of the hiring managers who will see it in order for a candidate to be considered for a position. So what exact information should writing actually contain? As we know it, the essentials are a name, contact information, responsibilities, and job titles. Seems simple enough to not leave any room for any known, classic resume mistakes, right? Not so much.

An effective simple resume format is very intricate and involves a strenuous writing process to ensure effectiveness. When attempting to create an effective, stand-out resume document that will catch that hiring manager’s attention, there can be instances in which not enough care was taken to actually make it effective and intrigue the people who will view it. With the use of the applicant tracking system (ATS), it is extremely easy to make a mistake that will destroy your chances of getting the dream job you desire.

At Simple Resume, we put our feet in the shoes of hiring managers in determining the undesirables to simplify the writing process. To better your job search, avoid making these 4 classic resume mistakes that will hurt your chances of getting hired.

1) Grammatical Errors

Grammatical errors are by far the most obvious mistake you can make in writing a professional document. The last thing you want is hiring managers thinking you are incompetent for the job, and there’s no better way to do this than spelling things incorrectly.

According to a study conducted by CareerBuilder, 77% of applicants who submitted resumes with grammatical errors were not hired. The most successful resumes are the result of candidates taking the extra time to proofread a countless number of times to make sure their spelling and grammar is correct. It even helps to have another pair of eyes look at your work as well to ensure there are no resume mistakes in your writing. You can also contact our in-house team of professional resume writers for writing expertise.

2) Template & One-Size-Fits-All Approach

This is a classic resume mistake that many will find is simply not the approach to use in writing a simple resume. Your document must first pass through the applicant tracking system before it can even reach the hands of a hiring manager. If you use this method, the screening technology implemented in the ATS will automatically filter your document out of the job candidate pool. One of the most common ways job seekers use a one-size-fits-all approach is a simple resume template.

You should focus and tailor to the specific job you are applying for, not multiple jobs. When undergoing a screening implemented by an ATS, a template will deviate from your given course of focus. Many companies may promise consumers that a basic resume template will save them time in their job search and yield positive results. However, a basic resume design that is too commonplace does not do anything to separate you from your competition.

Also, the design of a simple resume template is often misleading as it actually confuses and disorients applicant tracking systems and can ultimately lead to rejection. Avoid using a one-size-fits-all approach and avoid using a one-size-fits-all template at all costs (most of them are free for a reason)!

3) Highlighting Duties Instead Of Accomplishments

The saying “actions speak louder than words” details the revealing of one’s true character through actual actions instead of just saying things that hold no substance. This saying should be applied when differentiating duties from accomplishments.

The best way to showcase your abilities and the things you’ve done in your previous positions is to incorporate your accomplishments.

Showcasing specific projects and work results verbalizes your value as an employee through writing. Accomplishments go above and beyond in describing how well you did your job and what you can bring to the organization.

4) Not Enough Specifics

Hiring managers want specifics on what you’ve done to qualify yourself for the position at bay. This goes beyond just stating the obvious. Here is a perfect example. The following scenario details two candidates, who worked in the same position, describing their job duties:

Candidate #1
• Provided customer service to clients

Candidate #2
• Actively engaged in providing top customer service to 15-20 clients per day, helping retain clients and facilitate positive relationships

These two candidates performed the same job. However, as a hiring manager, you would be more inclined to select Candidate #2 for an interview as she succeeded in providing much more specific detail.

These are classic resume mistakes that will make hiring managers tell you to see your way out the door before you’ve even entered the room! These classic resume mistakes can be avoiding by hiring professional services to carefully tailor your document. Order a low cost resume (payment plan option included!) and be well on your way to attaining your career goals.

Basic Resume Writing Tips To Stand Out From The Crowd

September 26, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

Creating an effective, basic resume format to gain the attention of recruiters and hiring managers requires skill. The professional resume is one of the most important documents you will have throughout your career. It has the potential to either help you or hurt you when you’re applying to positions and can even net you big pay increases when transitioning jobs!

An effective and basic resume design has the ability to stand out in a sea of similar applicants and candidates with backgrounds that may or may not be better than yours. Early in your career, a simple resume is usually the more efficient route to go. However, that may not work as well if you are pursuing a management or executive level role (for executive-level writing, click here).

Our team conducted research on some of the best practices when seeking to land an entry level position. Here are four basic resume writing tips to make you stand out from the crowd.

Keep The Language In Your Basic Resume Simple And Relevant

While it may be wise to include as many keywords as possible to make sure your document is optimized and shows up in databases for as many search terms as possible, you will want to ensure your keywords are relevant to the position and industry. There is no point adding hundreds of keywords that are outside of the scope your responsibilities or irrelevant to your job function, as a hiring manager could ask you about them in an interview.

Another thing to keep in mind with your writing language is to not overstuff your writing with keywords. Resumes have to go through applicant tracking systems (ATS) before they are pushed out to hiring managers. Applicant tracking systems scan resumes for relevant keywords pertaining to the job description. However, if you’re “keyword stuffing” to purposely disorient the ATS, the system will pick up on this and immediately filter out your resume (check out these simple resume techniques for more on how beat an applicant tracking system).

Keeping the language of your resume simple and relevant is strategy that helps with hiring manager approval. No one wants to read a document that is over-written and overly complicated. Remember, successful resumes are resumes that serve as marketing tools to assist you in successfully landing interviews and should not be submitted as dissertations!

Highlight Your Career Accomplishments, Not Job Responsibilities

A simple mistake that we often see in the basic resume design is the utilization of job responsibilities to fill out the content of your simple resume. Hiring managers are more concerned with what you can help their organization achieve and are looking for prospective candidates who can add a track record of success.

It’s always best to use sentences that outline your achievements and include as much quantifiable information as you can too. On a basic resume constructed of the written word, the inclusion of numbers immediately draws the attention of hiring managers. Candidates who provide quantifiable measurements to their career accomplishments are highly more likely to be called for an interview, which is why it is a good idea to include them.

Use A Word Limit Of 400 Per Page

While it may seem like a good idea to fill your document with as many words as possible and maximizing the use of keywords, you will want to stick to a word limit of roughly 400 words per page.

Limiting your content to 400 words has been found to be an ideal balance of keyword density and aesthetic appeal. It enhances the appeal of your writing by providing allowing sufficient space for you to detail your experience and accomplishments without blowing out the word count. This presents the hiring manager with a simple resume that is overly dense and unattractive.

Use Bullet Points To Break Up Large Chunks Of Text In Your Simple Resume

During the formatting stage, a simple writing tip is to use bullet points instead of paragraphs to break up the text. In order for your content to strike a hiring manager’s interest, he/she must be able to read it. If the document consists of paragraph text, directly pinpointing your accomplishments will be extremely difficult and unpleasant on the eyes.

The usage of bullet points is effective in highlighting one accomplishment at a time instead of explaining your career in paragraph form. Additionally, bullet points help with focusing the hiring manager’s attention on areas of your document that you want to draw attention to.

Additionally, bullet points help with focusing the hiring manager’s attention on areas of your writing that you want to draw attention to. Utilize bullet points to further enhance your modern resume writing skills.

Resume Design | Simple Tips To Knock Out Before 30

September 19, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

Your twenties is a pivotal time when setting up a foundation that could potentially blossom into a lucrative and rewarding career. While many young job seekers spend their twenties job hopping and finding their rightful place in the workforce, top performers in their industry gain momentum by choosing positions that will allow them to acquire the proper experience and develop relevant professional accomplishments. Great accomplishments and career growth in your twenties can be all for nothing if it is not presented properly. To assure that you have the best professional resume design optimized for your thirties, use these 4 simple resume tips to set you up for success.

1. Drop Your Resume To One Page

Before the age of 30, it is common to have anywhere between 1 to 10 years of experience to write about. This means that a simple one-pager will be best suited to represent your professional skills and development through the course of your career. One of the most important reasons behind using a one-page document is to keep the resume simple and diminish the possibility of being passed on by hiring managers that sift through hundreds of applications.

It is important to remember that hiring managers are looking to find the right candidate during their search that will fill the position with precision within a small time frame. A short and basic design loaded with valuable information are always sought out by recruiters and hiring managers. Be concise in your basic resume writing and highlight your best accomplishments in one page.

2. Use A Text-Based Simple Resume Format

Although the idea of a heavily stylized simple resume design may seem enticing, statistics show that these graphics-driven simple resume designs do not perform well against applicant tracking systems (ATS). Applicant tracking systems assist human resources and recruitment efforts by strategically pulling candidate background information into specific fields in a specific order.

Applicant tracking systems significantly decrease the amount of time it takes to successfully hire someone for a role by filtering out basic resumes that are not a match. Research performed by Jobscan has shown that 98.2% of Fortune 500 companies implement applicant tracking systems in their hiring processes. According to a Kelly OCG survey, it is estimated that 66% of large organizations and 35% of small organizations rely on ATS software to effectively screen applicants.

Don’t risk losing out on a position because your writing is not parsing properly into ATS. Skip the creativity and devote time to preparing the content of your writing as well as ensuring that you are using a clean, text-based format. Resumes that work seem to focus on your technical skills and professional accomplishments to help hiring managers see your value immediately. Keep in mind that this also doesn’t mean your resume design needs to be bland. Check out how our Simple Resume Design Team has optimized formatting for the modern-day job market by downloading our sample.

3. Work On Your Professional Summary

A professional summary is a short description at the beginning of your professional resume format that briefly details your title, experience, and skills. A succinct and attractive professional summary that provides hiring managers with a snapshot of your skills, background, and technical abilities is the best way to start.

Recruiters typically only spend roughly 6-7 seconds to read an applicant’s writing and will only look to read the professional summary before scanning for your current position and company. For this reason alone, it is highly important to invest time and energy into getting your professional summary well-developed. Optimizing your content to immediately detail your career accomplishments within the initial 6-7 second scan is critical.

4. Develop Professional Affiliations And Take Courses

Your twenties should consist of engaging in activities to invest in your professional network and skills. It is beneficial to consistently attend professional networking events to network and make professional connections even prior to looking for a new position. Build relationships and consistently follow up with your connections. At the end of the day, you never know who you might know that will have opportunities for you to take in the future.

Start by affiliating yourself with working professionals who share the same ideals and aspirations. This has been proven to open the door to many employment opportunities for young working professionals. Seek to join industry-related groups through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and attend trade shows and conferences.

While you are building your professional network, look to pursue additional education and training in specialized courses. Use any opportunity to further educate yourself to help take your professional skills to another level. By doing so, this will work to separate you from fellow job candidates by proving that you’re driven, motivated, and eager to better yourself.

Simple Resume Design Strategy | Not Everything Matters

October 1, 2016 By Simple Resume Team

One of the most notorious misconceptions for basic resume writing is that the document itself needs to disclose everything you have ever done during the duration of your career. The job you had at the shoe store, your role as an overnight stock associate in college, or that one time when you worked for Walmart for a couple of months. You would think that every employer would want to know of every job for verification and extensive background check purposes, right? WRONG!

For those beginning their journey for a new position, it is beneficial to be strategic in your simple resume design to bring focus to the important aspects of your career history. This will help the any potential hiring manager understand the value that you can bring to the specific role you’re applying to.

Let’s face it. When was the last time you actually sat down and read any one’s 3-page resume word-for-word? How about a 1500-word over-stuffed essay squeezed onto 2 pages? Time is of value for most hiring managers and recruiters looking for new candidates. Considering the large amount of resumes they receive for one job posting, hiring managers only take 6-7 seconds to look over a candidate’s simple resume design before moving on to the next.

This is why it is essential to be strategic.

The first and most essential tip to having an effective document is to avoid listing irrelevant positions on your simple resume. Many may believe that the more work experiences you show, the more you present yourself as a dependable, trustworthy, and hard-working candidate. This is typically may be considered acceptable when you’re applying for an entry-level job. However, this should not be practiced when searching for higher levels jobs or positions looking for distinctive technical skills. Due to the nature of entry-level positions, employers may be giving you a “pass” since it’s not considered a specialized role.

When you’re speaking specifically of higher-level, salaried positions, mistakes such as oversharing can completely ruin your chances of getting the job. The ultimate goal for any job seeker is to get a call for an interview. Choosing to go with a simple resume design will assure that it becomes a personal marketing tool. To put it in perspective, a recruiter or hiring manager will not contact a candidate for an engineering role when they market that had sliced meat in the deli department when they were 18.

Insights from various recruiting firms tell us that upon an initial scan, most hiring managers and recruiters are only looking at three main factors in a simple resume design: the candidate’s current position, his/her tenure, and education.

Here’s how you capitalize on your writing efforts:

First, make sure that your simple resume design strategically places your job history in the limelight, with a resume simple enough to ensure the dates are clear and easy to follow. Formatting is critical to the development of your professional document. Although it can be tricky, our cost-effective resume writers are certified professionals who can meet all of your formatting needs.

Next, be sure to place heavy emphasis on the professional accomplishments you have garnered in your previous and current positions. Show case as many quantitative and tangible wins as possible. Highlighting your accomplishments will immediately broadcast that not only are you qualified to get the job done, but you’re able to successfully do it well. Process of improvements and efficiencies are key items to speak about, as they will boost your credibility and ability to exceed metrics.

Finally, make sure your education is listed clearly – highlighting the school you have attended, your major, and degree obtained. There is a common belief that job seekers who have obtained four-year degrees from higher education have highly developed skills and are considered more fitting for specific roles than other candidates. Though it is just as important to have professional experience, including your education for recruiters or hiring managers will almost always work in your favor during your job search.

Remember, most job positions will require applicants to have a certain level of education and you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity because you didn’t take the time to list your education properly.

Strategizing to keep your resume simple will ensure that you are putting out the best information for the employer as you possibly can. Not everything job-related will matter in your search for a career. Leave off the unrelated work experiences that are unrelated to the position or is outdated. If you have made calculated decisions about your career, your current position should follow a practical progression toward the position you are applying for.

Between your current position, your loyalty (as shown by your prior job tenure), and your education, hiring managers will be able to make an informed decision as to whether or not to invite you for an interview.

Simple Resume Cover Letter | Relocation

October 1, 2016 By Simple Resume Team

infographic summarizing relocation tips for simple resume and simple resume cover letter writing

So, you’ve got your eyes set on the big city. Perhaps you’re looking to start a new life, a new career, make new friends, uncover better opportunities, or just looking for a change of pace. When you find a position during your job search that immediately sparks your interest and also allows you to relocate, it is critical to develop a simple resume cover letter suitable for the position. Though your experiences will eventually determine the chance of successfully of landing the job, it is important to utilize the following tips to allow you the best chances.

Slow Down

You’ve created a simple resume format that is optimized and built-for-performance, your simple resume cover letter is polished, and your LinkedIn profile can’t seem to keep hiring managers away! Before you begin to apply for the new position, take a second to look over the information you are about to provide the hiring manager. A tiny slip up can completely obliterate your chances of landing your dream job in your dream city.

When approaching the topic of relocating to a potential employer, there are a few different methods you can use to broach the topic during the job application process. In the initial stage, when you are creating your resume draft, the best practice is to be tactical about your current address on both your simple resume and simple resume cover letter. Taking a tactical approach with your address will prevent your document from being filtered out geographically by Applicant Tracking Systems.

Avoid Adding Your Current Address

DO NOT include your current physical address . Instead, provide a location that is in the general vicinity of where the job is located or where you are looking to relocate to. If you have a physical address belonging to friends or family, ask to use their address until you can obtain a more permanent one.

Keep in mind that if you are looking to relocate to a new city, you will need to have the flexibility of traveling to the desired destination with short notices for interviews. In case of this, make sure that you have travel funds ready or means to get to the location when needed!

Implement Relocation Strategy In Your Cover Letter

In addition to including the city and state you want to relocate to in the header of both your simple resume and cover letter, you’ll want to mention your relocation in the body of your cover letter for consistency. To properly design a simple resume cover letter for relocation, add a brief declaration of your interest in the role and use this section to explain that you are looking to move to the area.

In your explanation, be sure to provide a timeline of your expected move-in date as well. This is considered to be a strategy to avoid any concerns of a late start in a new position. If you know the employer is looking to hire on someone within the next month, be certain to state that you will be relocating within the next month and that the transition will not affect the hiring process.

Although it is important to mention the fact that you’re looking to relocate in your simple resume cover letter, remember to keep the focus on the value that you will bring to the organization. It is of critical importance to put more attention and emphasis on this rather than where you are currently located.

At the end of the day, there isn’t a single employer who would dare to hire someone who is unqualified for the position. Your qualifications alone will determine the process of gaining employment for a new role in a new location and company. Because of this, be sure to focus your efforts to highlight your strengths and accomplishments making them the focus of both your cover letter and resume.

Expect Nothing

You may have heard of some cases where employees receiving a special relocation package from their companies to assist with their relocation expenses. There are even many cases of employers paying the full expense of relocating including unpacking, finding temporary housing, and travel reimbursement.

However, even though you may be looking for relocation jobs, do not expect any help with your relocation. Companies are not obligated to pay relocation expenses. Thus, the company of interest can actually negate your job candidacy and find someone who is truly local to limit the costs of paying to relocate an employee.

Now that you’ve successfully brought up your moving plans briefly in your simple resume cover letter and your cost effective resume, you’ve essentially covered the bases. You didn’t hide that you were looking to relocate, you gave the employer an ideal timeline for your move, and you’ve prioritized highlighting your skills and qualifications to ensure that you’re a good hire. Once you have all of this information ready, it’s time to bring it home and allow your application to speak for itself!