How to Tailor Your Resume to Each Job Application
You’ve probably heard the advice that you should tailor your resume for each job that you’re applying for in order to give you a better shot at being considered. But what does that really mean? If your qualifications haven’t changed, how should your resume be different?
We’ll break down what it means to tailor your resume for the job you want and explain why it’s so important to do so. We’ll also provide a step-by-step guide to customize your resume so that it gets noticed by hiring managers and gives you a better chance of being granted an interview.
What does it mean to tailor your resume?
Tailoring your resume simply means customizing it based on the requirements and responsibilities of the position you’re applying for. Most people are reasonably qualified to do various jobs, which can be true even early in your career.
For example, you might be qualified to be a childcare provider, an administrative assistant, or a delivery driver. However, those positions have vastly different job responsibilities, so each hiring manager will look for different qualities in the applicants they review. All those summers you spent babysitting would be a highly relevant experience to a daycare owner reviewing your application. Still, they probably wouldn’t be viewed as highly by the hiring manager looking for someone to handle their office’s admin duties.
Tailoring your resume ensures that you highlight the qualifications that are most applicable to the position you want, making it clear that you’re capable of doing the job and that you meet the minimum requirements.
Reasons to tailor your resume for each job application
Make it past automated screening tools
You obviously want to make yourself look as polished and impressive as possible to a potential employer. Still, there’s a much more procedural reason you need to tailor your resume: to get past the machines companies use to help them screen applicants. These machines, called applicant tracking systems (ATSs), filter through resumes using automation and artificial intelligence to decide whether a candidate meets the minimum requirements of a job. If your resume doesn’t show this, you’ll be filtered out and never even get the chance to talk to a hiring manager.
Related: How to Beat Applicant Tracking Systems
Capture recruiters’ attention
Human recruiters can be even more ruthless than machines when screening applicants. If your resume looks generic and contains no clues about why you’re the right candidate for the job, you’ll leave them asking, “Why on earth did this person apply?” Customizing your resume helps quickly communicate to a busy recruiter why you deserve a closer look.
Improve your chances of being interviewed
Sure, you might have basic qualifications like a college degree or the right technical credentials, but hiring managers have a finite amount of time. It’s not feasible for them to interview every single person who may or may not be qualified to determine their capabilities. Instead, they create a shortlist of the applicants who appear to be the strongest candidates based on their resumes and then allocate their limited interview time to those people. Tailoring your resume to make it as strong as possible for a specific position gives you a better chance of being on that shortlist.
Stand out in a large crowd of candidates
Some people who are looking for work will apply for every position they see regardless of whether they’re qualified, hoping that someone will call them back. Maybe you’ve been one of these people in the past. This means hiring managers often receive dozens or even hundreds of applications for a single opening. If you want to stand out in the sea of candidates, you must take additional measures like tailoring your resume to get noticed.
Steps to tailor your resume for job applications
1. Review the job description
Though customizing your resume takes time, it’s actually not all that difficult. Everything you need to tailor your resume is right there in the job description. It’s like an insider playbook telling you exactly what recruiters and applicant tracking systems will look for when they screen your application.
One big component is keywords. Keywords are words and phrases automated systems scan for in resumes in order to filter candidates in or out from the next round of the hiring process. Keywords are often found within the job description and qualifications of a job posting.
Let’s take a look at a typical sales associate position. The words in bold are examples of keywords an ATS would likely be scanning for.
[COMPANY]’s sales associates play a key role in providing customers with friendly service and knowledgeable support in finding products to fulfill their needs. Our sales associates thrive in a fast-paced environment while ensuring an excellent customer experience by keeping departments clean and well-stocked. If you love to learn and have a passion for helping others, come join us on our sales floor.
Qualifications:
• Enthusiastic
• Hard-working
• Honest and accountable
• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to handle multiple tasks and work well under pressure
Essential Job Functions:
• Connect with customers, ask about their needs, recommend our products, and excite customers about their purchases.
• Work in cooperation with management and team members to achieve sales goals.
• Process customers at checkout using a point of sale (POS) system.
• Process customer refunds and exchanges.
• Demonstrate and understand compliance with the company’s safety processes.
• Answer telephone and provide customers with phone support.
As you can see, keywords tend to be specific job duties, technical knowledge, prior experience, and characteristics that describe the ideal candidate. You’d want to use these words and phrases directly or in very similar terms in your resume for this particular position.
Related: How to Find Keywords in a Job Description to Use in Your Resume
2. Show that you meet the requirements
Another must in tailoring your resume is demonstrating that you meet the minimum requirements. Don’t assume that the reader will infer this based on the education or experience you list. Spell it out for them in direct terms.
Here are some of the possible items you’ll want to customize depending on the position.
- Years of experience
- Type of experience (job titles, industry, work environment, etc.)
- Education level
- Technical credentials
- Certifications
- Licenses
- Hard and soft skills
- Personality traits
- Clean driving record
- Type of driver’s license (i.e. CDL)
- Physical requirements (i.e., moving boxes up to 30 pounds)
- Language proficiency
- Ability to travel
- Willingness to relocate
Once again, you should base this on what’s listed in the job description.
3. Demonstrate prior experience
Once you’ve demonstrated that you meet the job’s minimum requirements and have gotten through the initial screening by using the right keywords, it’s time to show the reader what you’ve got in terms of relevant experience. Highlighting your prior experience with tasks that are related to what you’d be doing in this job helps a hiring manager envision you in the role while instilling confidence that you’d be able to perform up to expectations.
When listing your prior experience, be specific and reference duties that are similar to the job requirements. Instead of using a broad, vague description like ‘handled administrative duties,’ describe how you answered customer inquiries by phone and email, maintained a filing system to organize vendor information, and recorded detailed notes of meetings and presentations. These rich descriptions demonstrate your capabilities and draw parallels to the duties of the job you’re applying for, making you a stronger candidate.
Remember: you only have limited space in your resume to impress a hiring manager. In most cases, candidates with fewer than ten years of experience should limit their resume to one page. So, make every word count with detail and meaning.
4. Highlight key accomplishments
Your accomplishments are one of the biggest opportunities you have to differentiate yourself from other candidates and show the unique value you can bring to a company. This is one of the trickiest parts of a resume to tailor because you can’t simply pull accomplishments out of a hat; you have to work with your actual achievements and make them relevant to the job you seek. It’s all about how you position them.
In your last job, one of your biggest projects was helping raise funds for a new community center. If you merely say you raised funds for a community center, it’s not very tailored to any particular job or skill. Instead, position the accomplishment in a way that’s aligned with the most important skills in the job description, like communication, marketing, sales, etc.
Here’s how that might look:
- Communication: “Clearly communicated the benefits of a new community center to more than 300 residents via phone and face-to-face.”
- Marketing: “Developed creative, compelling video and print campaigns to disseminate information and drive donations.”
- Sales: “Supported fundraising campaign efforts generating $2M in contributions, exceeding goal by 16%.”
Again, the more specific you can be, the better. You are the only one with these unique experiences, so you should use them to set yourself apart as a candidate.
5. Eliminate irrelevant details
Tailoring your resume isn’t just about what you put into it; what you leave out is equally important. As we said earlier, space is limited, and a hiring manager’s time is valuable, so your resume shouldn’t contain any information that’s not pertinent to the job you’re applying for.
Review your experience section closely, making sure every detail serves to position you as a capable candidate. Hobbies, extracurricular activities, and volunteer work have an even higher threshold–to make it onto your resume, these things must be directly relevant to the job; otherwise, they could reflect poorly on you or invite unwanted judgment.
Tailoring your resume for every job you apply to takes time, but it’s a crucial step that makes the difference between getting selected for an interview and getting eliminated before you even get your foot in the door. By choosing the right details to include and tying everything back to the job description, you’ll create a highly specific resume that’s much more likely to get you hired.
Related: Resume Mistakes to Avoid
