Simple Resume Tips

Professional Resume Outline | To Include Or Not Include Education

December 10, 2018 By jmjeditor

When creating a professional resume outline, it is extremely important to have a section to include your education. At one point in time, many job seekers were able to get their foot in the door in companies and didn’t necessarily need a degree. In today’s competitive job market, it is nearly impossible to get an entry-level job without at least a bachelor’s degree. As time goes on, job seekers will be expected to have even higher levels of education to qualify for roles. In this article, we will detail why it is important to include a section for your education in your professional resume outline.

Meet Qualifications

Education typically serves as a minimum qualification on a simple resume. In most job descriptions, you will find the qualification “bachelor’s degree required”. Most of these same jobs at one point only required candidates to have a high school diploma to be considered for employment. There is a general consensus that people with degrees have developed more skills and are more mature than people with only high school diplomas. Therefore, it is a must to include your educational background within your simple resume layout to meet qualifications.

Education Shows Your Worth

Employers value an employee with a quality education simply for the fact that they can invest in them. People with degrees are seen as more stable and less likely to job hop. With an educated employee, they are also most likely to advance in their respective roles. Many companies do not allow employees without a degree to advance into higher-level management or executive roles.

Education Shows Desire

A degree shows that you are able to fully commit to focusing on a project until its completion. In the professional world today, many roles consist of several hands-on projects that can take months or years to complete. In order to complete a four-year undergraduate program or two-year graduate program, you must have the desire to succeed. To employers, this shows focus and the ability to commit.

Stand Out

Although the education section within your professional resume outline is kept brief, it is critically important to include it in order to stand out amongst other job candidates. In accordance with this, there is an extremely good chance that you will stick out the more advanced your degree is in comparison with other applicants. In terms of setting yourself apart from the competition, it will come most handy if your education and skills align with the field which you are pursuing.

Simple Resume Format | Using Bullet Points In Your Simple Resume

December 6, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

Why Bullet Points?

When writing a contemporary resume, your approach must be strategic to create a good simple resume format that will impress hiring managers. To climb your way up the organizational ladder, it is of critical importance to organize the content of your professional resume in the form of bullet points.

On average, recruiters only spend about 6 seconds looking at a job candidate’s resume. Bullet points can help maximize the impact of your simple resume by allowing hiring managers to immediately key in on your accomplishments.

Format, Format, Format

Bullet points are quintessential elements that are needed to simplify and shorten a resume. In retrospect, bullets have been proven to be successful in making a job candidate’s accomplishments stand out within those 4-6 seconds of the initial screening of your simple resume format.

Choosing to create a bulleted list of your accomplishments within your resume instead of writing in paragraph form helps create aesthetic appeal and break up your text. This can have a positive effect on the readability of your resume.

A simple resume format with bullet points will help award you with an interview. Bullet points have significant importance in the writing process. Your simplified resume should not reflect the attributes of an essay in any fashion. With bullet points, you have the opportunity to organize, highlight, and separate your skills, accomplishments, and job duties.

Start With Action Words

Each bullet point should start with an action word to set the tone for your listed accomplishment. Let’s use a management role for an example. When applying for a management role, be sure to include action verbs such as “managed”, “lead”, and “directed”. Be sure to research top action verbs for your field and include them in your simple work resume.

Don’t Use Too Many Bullet Points

Another thing to keep in mind when preparing a bulleted list of your accomplishments is the number of bullet points to include underneath each position. Including too many bullets can prove to be detrimental to the value of your simple resume. We recommend implementing no more than 3 to 4 bullets for each position listed on your work resume.

The key to constructing a great simple resume format is all about the formatting of your work history and accomplishments. Keep in mind that even after successfully passing through the initial screening of an applicant tracking system to land your work resume in the hands of a human being, your simple resume still needs to be attractive and readable! No one enjoys reading through huge blocks of text, so utilizing bullet points to summarize your job history and accomplishments will be appreciated by hiring managers.

LinkedIn can BOOST your Simple Resume

November 26, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with more than 562 million users worldwide. Over the past several years, LinkedIn has been popularized by its amazing features that allow brands and jobseekers to establish connections and build personal, professional relationships. In several ways, it has become the new platform for online applications and resumes.

As a job seeker or working professional, your LinkedIn profile and your simple resume are your personal marketing tools for job candidacy. If a job seeker has a LinkedIn profile, employers and hiring managers will look to view the job applicant’s credentials on both their LinkedIn profile and their simple resume. LinkedIn’s ultimate purpose is to serve as an extension of a job seeker’s simple resume to further validate their skills, accomplishments, and employment history. Here’s how a LinkedIn Profile can BOOST your simple resume.

Jobs You Can Apply For

On the “Jobs” feature, a job seeker can find thousands of job applications. Within the jobs posted, companies have the option to direct applicants to their own sites or use the “Easy Apply” feature to collect applicants on LinkedIn’s platform. With this feature, these applications require you to upload your simple resume. Utilizing LinkedIn’s profile features to optimize your profile can make your simple resume stand out from others when submitted.

Headline To Optimize Your Skills

Your headline is one of the most important features for optimization in LinkedIn. When crafting your simple resume for your desired position, your headline should be keyword optimized and expanded onto your profile. For example, you may have the headline of “Account Manager”. In order to better qualify you for account manager positions, you may want your headline to be “Account Manager | Customer Relationship Management (CRM) | Forecasting | Data Analysis”. This will propel your name to the top of search engines and give recruiters information before looking into your simple resume.

Information You Can’t Fit In Your Simple Resume

LinkedIn enables you to include detailed information that you can’t fit into your simple resume. Having a LinkedIn profile provides you with more space to include more specific details on job responsibilities and accomplishments. This also allows you to include more previously held positions on your page which can be beneficial if you have held many positions relevant to your desired role.

Job Resume | What To Include And Not Include In Your Resume

November 20, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

Any entry-level job seeker entering the workforce or working professional looking to move forward in their career path will be required to write and submit a resume before they enter into the hiring process. Job resumes have drastically changed in recent years, leaving many working professionals with the inability to write an effective resume. Here is a list of items to include and items not to include in your simple resume.

What To Include In A Job Resume:

Professional Email Address:

For freshers, it is important to have the correct contact information in your resume. More importantly, it is of critical importance that you include a professional email address. Many times, a job candidate may include his/her personal email in their job resume which can be considered inappropriate for professional settings.

For example, let’s say there are two job candidates; John Adam and Jay Smith. John and Jay are both applying for a role as a Technical Analyst, they both currently hold similar positions, and they both hold equal value as potential job candidates. In Jay’s resume, he uses the email “shootthejay23@gmail.com”. John uses the email “johnadam1@gmail.com” in his resume. John will most likely end up getting the call for an interview. A hiring manager would be more inclined to contact a potential job candidate with a business professional email.

This is important to remember when strategizing to land an interview. Including a professional email address will promote you as someone who is professional and has built a strong business acumen.

Keywords

Keywords and key phrases are the key tricks to creating an optimized simple resume. Including keywords and key phrases into your resume from job descriptions will not only beat applicant tracking systems (ATS), but also put you ahead of the competition in the job market.

Many job descriptions of today contain specific keywords that are used to describe the role and the type of job candidate that would be a match. Be cognizant of these keywords and work to include them in your simple resume’s content.

A lack of important keywords within your job resume can be detrimental to your chances of landing an interview. Plan to tailor your simple resume writing to include keywords to better your chances.

Relevant Work Experience

Relevant work experience is classified as work experience that is relevant to your desired job title. For example, if you’re looking to land a position as a Sales Manager, it would be wise to include work experiences that included extensive sales and customer service in your pattern of resume writing. Certified Professional Resume Writers are pros in determining what is considered relevant to certain industries.

Include your most relevant work experience to the position you are applying for. Including irrelevant experiences takes up unnecessary space on your simple resume and will limit the amount of relevant information you can fit.

What Not To Include In A Job Resume:

Private Information

Private information such as your date of birth, gender, religion, marital status, social security number, driver’s license number, physical address (include your city and state), and height/weight should not be included in your work resume. Not only can some of this information prove to be worthless, but it can also leave you at risk of identity theft if put in the wrong hands.

Be cautious and aim to only include information that is relevant to identify you in job candidacy such as your name, number, location, and email address.

Self-Photograph

A self-portrait is not necessary for your candidate profile. Having a headshot on your job resume can in fact create unnecessary bias that can be avoided.

Unless you are looking to apply for an acting or modeling role, it is best that you do not include a self-portrait in your simple resume.

Irrelevant Work Experience

Having a section filled with irrelevant work experience in your simple job resume layout takes up a great deal of space within your simple resume. In its essence, a job resume containing irrelevant work experience can cause job candidates to lose valuable space that can be used to list relevant accomplishments, experiences, and projects.

Irrelevant work experience can ultimately cause your resume to seem unfocused and show hiring managers that you do not have the experience they are looking for in a candidate. Work to include only relevant information within your simple resume.

High School Information

If you hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, your professional resume layout should not have a section to dedicate to any information from your high school career. This information can prove to be useless as it has been some time since you have been enrolled in high school.

Recruiters and hiring managers only want to see recent, relevant experience. Leave out the high school information and include only your college education.

Modern Resume Writing | The Best Keywords to List on your Resume

November 19, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

Performing keyword optimization for your simple resume is the key to receiving a call to interview. Keyword optimization is a detailed process that consists of thoroughly researching and selecting the top, best keywords to drive traffic from search engines. What is the importance of this in today’s modern resume writing?

The best resume examples that we’ve seen succeed by using keywords to show the employer the candidate is qualified for the role. In the job market today, qualifying for a job is no longer solely based on your skills and experience. Hiring managers are in search of a potential job candidates with optimized, quality, keyword-stuffed simple resumes. The majority of the quality within today’s modern resume writing now comes from the presence and quality of your keywords. This is due to the presence and use of applicant tracking system (ATS) software.

Applicant tracking system software is a software application that is implemented by employers to effectively screen job candidates in the hiring process. This software is utilized to prove whether or not they are qualified for the role. The candidate’s qualification for the role is based upon several factors such as job relevance and keyword usage. Due to this, today’s modern resume does not get a chance of being seen by a hiring manager. To be successful, we have included some of the best keywords you can insert into your resume writing format to better your chances of landing an interview.

Key Phrases In The Job Description

When you look at a job posting, take a very detailed look at the job description. Job descriptions contain extremely valuable information pertinent to the hiring process. Within their descriptions of the general tasks, responsibilities, and requirements of the role, they include specific keywords and key phrases such as “strong attention to detail” and “excellent verbal and written skills”.

The description will almost always be filled with important keywords and phrases. It is key to jot down the keywords and key phrases you see most frequently in the job description as they will be worthy to include in your pattern of resume writing. Failing to include this information will greatly diminish your chances of landing a job interview.

Soft Skills As Keywords

Nearly every job description you come across will contain soft skills. In the workplace, soft skills, also known as people skills, are becoming increasingly more important than ever. Contrary to hard skills, these skills are not easily developed and can be a hit-or-miss within the hiring of an employee.

Soft skills are acquired and developed through work experience and the desire for professional and self-development. Generally speaking, they can be seen as instrumental to success for the fact that they are key in establishing partnerships as well as developing key relationships. Many roles require a candidate to have developed sufficient soft skills in order to be a valuable asset to the organization as an employee.

Soft skills can be the difference maker in your job search. Some of the top soft skill keywords that are included in today’s modern resume writing are communication, teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, and leadership. Be aware that although they are important, they are also expected. Be sure to include them, but be mindful not to focus heavily on them in your job resume.

Hard Skills As Keywords

Hard skills are skills that are more focused, teachable, and will show employers you have the exact experience needed for the specific role. Hard skills are more industry-specific and are acquired depending on the field in which the role exists.

Hard skills are developed from actual field experience in your career. For example, computer programming skills such as proficiency in SQL and Python are much more focused than soft skills. A candidate would have to have actual experience and proficiency in these areas for it to be considered a skill.

Top hard skills will vary based on industry. Some specific examples of hard skills come in the fields of computer programming, legal, accounting, finance, and marketing.

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.

Easy Resumes | Writing A Simple Resume

October 18, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

A resume is a self-reflecting professional document that details your background, qualifications, experiences, and accomplishments that can be used as a tool for employers to qualify you for a job. Utilizing simple techniques in your resume writing can make for writing a simple easy resume.

In the writing process, it is extremely important to be strategic when piecing your information together in order to effectively stand out against other job competitors.

Convincing a hiring manager to set up an interview with you is a feat that can be achieved by using simple methods when constructing your simple resume. Our true and tried simple resume writing service specializes in bringing out the best of your career accomplishments and fine tuning your work to create a document simple yet effective enough to win over the likes of hiring managers. Here are 4 ways how writing a simple resume is more effective.

Legibility

Using simple methods to write easy resumes involves creating a document that is simplistic yet visually appealing to employers. Amongst the writing tactics utilized, a popular technique in writing an easy simple resume is using a simple, 10-12 sized font in a single-spaced format while leaving an adequate amount of white space for visibility.

Make sure you enhance the level of writing in your professional document with adequate spacing, simple words, and key phrases that hiring managers typically look for in a candidate. Taking these steps in writing a simple resume will ensure that your resume is legible and more readable to hiring managers.

“6 Seconds” Optimized

The average recruiter takes about 6-10 seconds to look at your resume and determine if you are qualified for the position or not. Within those 6-10 seconds, recruiters will quickly scan the information on your in an attempt to get a feel for your work and locate specific keywords or key phrases the employer is looking for. With this in effect, you will not have any time to waste in getting your simple resume optimized.

Writing simple and easy resumes gives you the ability to quickly highlight your focus keywords, use one-inch margins, bold job titles, and include professional accomplishments to make a simple, elegant resume. Making use of these key tactics will optimize your content for the initial screening of your document.

Bulleted

When writing a simple resume, the approach of the candidate has to be deliberate and calculated in order to successfully impress and persuade hiring managers enough to call for an interview.

Bullet points aid in maximizing the effectiveness of your work resume by allowing hiring managers to immediately key in on your career accomplishments. To climb your way up the organizational ladder, it is of critical importance to organize the content of your work resume in the form of bullet points.

In retrospect, bullet points have a proven track record of successfully making your professional accomplishments stand out within seconds of the initial screening of your simple resume. Creating a bulleted list of your career accomplishments helps mitigate clutter and immediately market your worth as a potential employee within the organization.

One-Page

As a general rule of thumb, if you have fewer than 10 years of professional experience in your field, you should have no more than one page of information. It is much more effective to have a one-page resume layout if you are seeking an internship, entry-level position, or professional-level position. A recruiter or hiring manager viewing your work will only want to see a brief summary of your achievements when looking over your professional history.

Hiring managers looking to fill entry-level and associate-level positions don’t want to waste their time reading through a lengthy document. Though some of these candidates may generally have a fair amount of work experience, employers typically want a one-page resume that is clear, concise, consistent, and quick to the point.

Minimizing the amount of unnecessary content will give you extra points in your job search efforts. To improve effectiveness, aim to limit the amount of unrelated content work experiences that generally take up a great amount of space. Writing short, relevant, and easy resumes can BOOST your chances of landing an interview.