Simple Resume Tips

Simple Resumes | The Layout That Will Land Your Dream Interview

October 17, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

Simple Resumes can come in many shapes, forms, and formats. Before the implementation of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), creative resume layouts were considered intriguing and visually appealing to potential employers. Now, due to the heavy-handed use of ATS, a creative resume format would be quickly filtered out of the job pool before they even reach the eyes of hiring managers.

Hiring managers tend to want to see a simple and professional resume format. Features such as flashy fonts, colorful paper, and candidate headshots can potentially work against the candidate by creating bias. Due to this, it is important to keep the simple job resume layout basic while focusing on the content (download one of our simple resume examples to see how your resume should be formatted).

Simple Font

The specific font that you use to write your content can have an effect on your job search. Hiring managers and recruiters tend to scrutinize candidates heavily, and choosing to use the wrong font can prove to be detrimental. Making a great first impression is important in not only impressing the employer, but also in moving forward towards your goal of a dream interview. Certain fonts can come off as unprofessional and not display well on white paper.

There is sometimes debate on whether or not to use serif or sans serif fonts. Many may say that serif fonts should be avoided as they are not as sharp or professional looking as san serif fonts. However, either or can be chosen for your writing.

Avoid using fonts such as Comic Sans, Lucida Console, Brush Script, and any font that looks too complicated or widely spaced out on paper. Studies show that some of the best simple fonts to use for simple resumes are Book Antiqua, Garamond, Cambria, and Calibri.

It is also a general rule of thumb to use a font size between 10-12 when writing a simple resume for two reasons; too small of a font can affect readability, creating difficulty for hiring managers to look through your information, and too large of a font could be perceived as a lack of content and information to share with the employer.

White Space

There is a standard rule that is simple to follow when it comes to white spacing on your resume. Similar to bullet points, white space is a technique that increases the chances of a hiring manager being able to immediately see your accomplishments.

When creating a simple resume format, your margins should be set to one inch on each side of the document to create a fresh, balanced simple resume. This eliminates the practice of cramming too many words into white space, which can negatively affect the readability of simple resumes.

Bullet Points

Your basic resume design should not reflect the attributes of an essay. Bullet points are critical to simplifying your information and making your accomplishments stand out within the first few initial seconds. They give you the opportunity to organize, highlight, and separate your skills, accomplishments, and job duties.

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

Simple resumes get interviews. Bullet points have significant importance in the writing process. Your content 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.

Relevancy

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is including irrelevant work experience, which negatively impacts simple resumes in several ways. It affects readability, decreases the value of your content, and takes up space. For example, if you are applying for an accounting role, simplify your writing to only include accounting information. By doing this, hiring managers will be able to see relevant, important points about your employment history.

Simple resumes will give you a better chance of landing an interview since they are clear, concise, and consistent. Utilize this information to propel your writing to BOOST your chances of creating a layout that will land your dream interview.

Simple And Professional Resume Tricks

October 16, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

The biggest first step for any job seeker looking to enter the job market is to take the time to build, critique, and review their resume to create a simple and professional resume design. Besides the interview, the traditional resume is the single most important aspect of the hiring process. Considering that a basic resume design is what essentially lands candidates interviews, the lack of a great, simple resume format diminishes your chances of moving forward in the hiring process.

With an increasing number of job applicants in the market, for any desirable position a job seeker may seek, he/she will face a high level of competition. As the level of competition continuously increases, job seekers are constantly looking for ways to vastly improve their resumes in efforts to stand out from their competitors. Here are 3 simple and professional resume strategies to help create an elegant resume that will stand out and land you that dream position.

1. Plug In Keywords

One of the most simple and professional resume tricks is plugging in keywords. Keywords are necessary to successfully beat an applicant tracking system (ATS). Job descriptions typically include specific keywords to describe the nature of the job and type of individual the employer is looking to hire. It is important to take notice of these keywords and work to include them in your simple resume’s content. A lack of keywords within your simple resume can be detrimental to your chances of landing an interview.

Keep in mind that even though it is consequential to implement key terms and key phrases throughout your resume, it is also equally important to be mindful of how many times you plug in keywords in your writing. Attempting to include too many key terms is a tactic known as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing your resume can agitate an applicant tracking system and cause your writing to look spammy. Hiring managers will surely catch on to this method. Try to avoid over-saturating your simple resume with keywords and aim to make your writing flow, as it will surely be noticed (check out our services for a keyword-optimized resume).

2. Bold & Italicize

Another simple and professional resume trick is to enhance the font of your writing. In resume writing, you will immediately need to attract the attention of hiring managers with your content. You will want hiring managers to look at your accomplishments to give them a better idea of the work you have done in your previous places of employment. The simple trick to doing this is to italicize them.

Italicizing differentiates your accomplishments from other pieces of text and helps employers key in on some of your most important qualities when they initially look over your simple resume design. You have the leeway to choose to italicize specifics such as your job title, areas of expertise, and other pertinent information to the role that you desire.

You also have the options between choosing to bold or italicize your content. We recommend using italics to highlight your specific roles, areas of expertise, and accomplishments and using a bold font to highlight your roles or the companies you worked for.

3. Quantify Your Accomplishments

Adding numbers to the content of your writing has a dynamic effect on the overall structure and impact of your job responsibilities and accomplishments. Quantifying statements throughout your writing will help employers visualize the overall impact you’ve had on the position and the organization.

It is pretty common to find that not all positions involve hard performance metrics. Because of this, many job seekers may find it difficult to quantify their job responsibilities and highlight their accomplishments. However, it is still very feasible to add numbers to any position listed on a resume.

Compare “provided customer service to clients” to “engaged with 15-20 clients per day to find quick resolutions in order to effectively solve complex situations”. Same task, same number of clients, different sentence structure. Keep in mind that an employer would be more inclined to interview the job candidate who demonstrated in his writing that he was able to handle 15-20 clients a day than a candidate who failed to include quantifiable measurements.

The best resume writing examples find ways to impress employers to receive chances at getting an interview. Too often, a resume design lacks substance and detail to make it stand out as a high quality resume and hinders your chances at speaking about your experiences in person. Utilizing these three simple and professional resume tricks will help BOOST your chances of getting an interview.

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 Layout Tips To Impress A Hiring Manager

September 20, 2018 By Simple Resume Team

A professional resume layout can accomplish the goal of gaining a competitive advantage in the job market. Impressing hiring managers today is an arduous task. According to Glassdoor, each corporate job attracts nearly 250 resumes on average. Out of those 250 candidates, only 4 to 6 will be awarded an opportunity to interview. These statistics demonstrate the alarming increase in the number of job candidates applying to jobs today and the competitiveness of the hiring process.

Research has shown that recruiters and hiring managers will typically spend only 6-7 seconds looking at a simple resume before determining whether or not a job candidate should move forward to an interview. A job search website called TheLadders used eye tracking software and found that upon the initial 6-7 scan, recruiters search for criteria such as the name, current title, company, current position start and end dates, previous title and company, previous position start and end dates, and education of the job candidate.

For this specific reason, it is extremely important to make sure your content is punchy, relevant, and showcases all of your key accomplishments and experience quickly. First impressions in the job hiring process is everything. When attempting to impress a hiring manager, implement these simple resume layout tips in your writing to boost your chances of making a great first impression.

1. Use A Simple Resume Layout

There are very few recruiters and hiring managers who like to read through over-complicated text or disorganized formatting. Pertaining to the overall appeal, the ultimate goal in its creation is to keep things simple and focus on the content. Allow your accomplishments and content to speak for itself. Also, make sure you’re not using any graphics and icons, as these do not help applicant tracking systems (ATS) grab the right information from your simple work resume to put into their systems.

Creating a professional resume layout that can compete against job competitors and beat applicant tracking systems is a difficult task and requires one to be meticulous. Certified writers are experts in the field and will guarantee a layout that will perform adequately. To obtain a cost effective resume layout designed for optimal performance, contact our team or check out our professional services.

2. Use Bullet Points To Summarize Job History

The key to an extraordinary and effective resume is proper formatting of your work history and career accomplishments. Bullet points help maximize the impact of your writing by allowing hiring managers to immediately key in on your career accomplishments.

It is critically important to remember that in beating the applicant tracking system, a standard resume layout needs to be attractive and easy-to-read. Again, no recruiter or hiring manager likes to read through huge blocks of text. Therefore, you must utilize bullet points to summarize your job history and accomplishments. Finding a perfect balance to be descriptive without being overly long-winded and staying away from bullet points that are far too short can prove to be the difference maker in your job search.

In a study conducted by CareerBuilder, 25 percent of hiring managers will not even waste their time reading through a job resume that contains long paragraphs and text. As a job seeker, of that 25 percent of hiring managers, one could have potentially offered you an interview. Be sure to bold your headlines and create bulleted lists of your areas of expertise and your accomplishments.

3. Use Legible, Simple Resume Fonts

Statistics have shown that some fonts work better for long-form reading, and others work better for shorter, more punchy content. Your resume is a technical document with ideally around 400 words, so plan to use a font that is legible and not over-complicated. Depending on how much relatable content you have, use a font that responds well to the size of font you need to use.

Avoid using fonts such as Comic Sans, Lucida Console, Brush Script, and any other font that looks complicated or widely spaced out on paper. Studies show that some of the best simple fonts to use for simple and professional resume writing are Book Antiqua, Garamond, Cambria, and Calibri.

It is also a general rule of thumb to use a font size between 10-12 when writing for these two reasons; too small of a font can affect the readability of your document which in turn can create difficulty for hiring managers to look through your information. Too large of a font could be perceived as an attempt to hide a lack of content and information to share with the employer.

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.