Resume Must-Haves For 2021

If you fail to ‘adapt with the times’ as a job-seeker, your resume will fall short. Making the proper adjustments starts with a willingness to learn and acclimate to new trends. Similar to how there are expectations for you to tailor your resume’s content to the job description you are applying for, there are expectations for the integral structure of your resume as well. The more months that have elapsed since you’ve last reopened your job search, the more alterations you will discover to be necessary.

Furthermore, between spiked unemployment rates and fluctuating employer needs, COVID-19’s impact makes a strong resume vital now more than ever. With the help of the career experts at The Ladders and CNBC Make It, we reveal four resume expectations all hiring managers will have amidst the coronavirus pandemic:

Remote Work Skills

Due to the pandemic, employees were forced into an abrupt change of environment, pushing many of you outside your comfort zone. As a result, there are likely new telecommunication skills and other resourceful skills you’ve acquired. Don’t gloss over this experience with generalized statements such as “I am a quick learner” or “I am adaptable.” Instead, share your experience working remotely and how you’ve been able to manage all your responsibilities or even become more productive. Provide details on how your company utilized Zoom, Slack, or another communication platform, and how you stayed heavily involved in meetings. 

How You’ve Adjusted to COVID-19 Within Your Role

Employers are looking for employees who have demonstrated an ability to adjust through unprecedented challenges and altering expectations. Reveal how you have proven yourself to be adaptable. Outside of the change in scenery, this may include budget adjustments, new technology, new responsibilities, or communicating with co-workers you haven’t worked with before. 

Showcase examples or critical metrics that highlight your abilities in critical thinking, organization, dedication, and other vital strengths you possess. But remember, this conversation is your chance to interview your potential employer as well. If you desire open communication with management, resources available to delimit workplace stress and aid mental health, or strong precautions put in place to limit the spread of the virus for all employees, now is the time to present these concerns.

Describing Previous Role and Employers

Unless your previous employment was with a nationally known company such as Google, Microsoft, or Amazon, it’s pivotal that you provide a brief company description. When you reflect on your previous role’s responsibilities, can you identify any similarities between your duties and the present job description? Incorporate a few of the keywords used by the employer as you highlight your relevant work experience. When emphasizing this experience in a previous role, Yang also recommends listing the company size as it will speak to the workload you took on and resources you had available.

*PRO TIP / BONUS TIP* – Include the job title for which you are applying at the top of your resume. A bold, relevant title can immediately grab the attention of the hiring manager. Career coach Peter Yang recommends you place this title directly beneath your name and contact information.

A Link to Your LinkedIn Profile

An often-neglected step in your application process is including the link to your LinkedIn profile page. Providing the link will offer quick access to the hiring manager when they download your application and garner a proper first impression. Presenting this digital first-impression promptly is critical, considering how much of the interview process is conducted virtually. A ResumeGo study found that candidates with a “comprehensive” LinkedIn profile have a 71% higher chance of getting an interview than those who don’t. Just remember to optimize all the features LinkedIn has to offer, rather than simply repeating your resume. Those who optimized LinkedIn’s features for a comprehensive profile page saw a 6% increase in callbacks over those who did not.

Wrap Up

Incorporating these four elements will maximize your shot at landing the interview and, ultimately, a new job. For more insights into constructing a winning resume in 2021 and real examples, check out Peter Yang’s full article. Yang discusses the importance of including an experience summary, which should take precedent over the age-old objective statement.

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Job Searching Tips To Ignore in 2021

With the abundance of career advice outlets and career resources, it can be challenging to know what guidance is most applicable to you and your status. Regardless of your situation, there is sure to be outdated or irrelevant information that crosses your screen. Our friends at Monster recently revealed five common thoughts and strategies you’re better off disregarding. We breakdown a few examples below:

Keeping Your Resume Brief

Have you ever been instructed to limit your resume‘s content to one page? Throughout my collegiate experience, I had professors offer that same advice. However, I had other professors that insisted job-seekers fill two complete pages and professors who did not oppose any length. So, what’s the correct direction to take? If one of your primary concerns is a hiring manager’s thoughts on your resume’s length, it will serve you best to reevaluate your priorities. 

If you possess extensive experience that applies to a job description at-hand, it would be foolish to forego mentioning acquired skills due to a fear of losing your reader’s attention. Don’t cross over to a second page for the wrong reasons, i.e., detailing responsibilities rather than accomplishments. While you never want to stretch words or embellish on your achievements within a role, you should always reflect on any experience you believe positions you as most qualified for the opportunity. 

Believing A Great Resume Will Get You Hired

A thorough, compatible resume may land you a job interview, but it will not serve as a golden ticket to getting you hired. Careful research, strong presentation, and maintaining a positive attitude are the keys to landing the job. It is your responsibility to live up to the initial impression you placed in your interviewer’s head. No matter how qualified you may feel you are, you must come prepared to answer some tough questions. Just as you will come with questions prepared and ‘holes’ needing filled when it comes to the job description, your interviewer will do the same with your work history.  

Only Sending a Thank-You Note

No, I am not insinuating that you shouldn’t send a note of appreciation following your job interview, but as Bettina Seidman helps reveal, it shouldn’t stop at just that. Your follow-up letter should reiterate your interest in the job, express your appreciation for their time, emphasize why you are the most qualified candidate, and highlight an experience that prepared you for the role. If your letter does not address the question, “Why should we hire you?”, then you are doing yourself a tremendous disservice in how the employer will remember you.

Following Your Passion

‘Follow Your Passion’ – Often the most misguided principle extended to the common job-seeker. Passions in and outside of the business world often adjust in their hierarchy or change entirely, “and sometimes these passions do not serve as a viable source of income.” Catherine Conlan with Monster offers up an example of former NASDAQ-listed CEO Heidi Nazarudin choosing to pursue her passion for photography as a hobby rather than a primary source of income. This allows the best opportunity to live comfortably and still indulge in your passions. From there, who knows, maybe you can seize the opportunity to grow your network and turn your passion into something more prominent.

Wrap Up

The challenge to ‘adapt with the times’ is magnified now more than ever as we progress through 2021. As it goes with any well-intentioned guidance, you must approach any traditional tips and tricks with caution. Not every piece of advice will be inapplicable to your situation. More often than not, you will find it is time to push back on the old-age foundations.

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Six Resume Mistakes To Avoid in 2021

Whether you are looking to get started on your first job search out of college or looking to change careers and reopen your search, having an up-to-date resume is imperative. Recently, our friends at Nexxt revealed six of the most commonly overlooked mistakes made by job-seekers on their resumes. With the help of our friends at Nexxt, we breakdown the key examples here: 

Too Many Soft Skills

With an average of 30 seconds or less to capture a hiring manager’s attention, it’s best not to waste time with self-proclamations of being a team player, good communicator, or a sound multi-tasker, etc. There is no easy way to prove these characteristics through words on a resume, so it is best to leave the comments to be shared by your professional references or to be portrayed naturally during your interview. Push an emphasis on your applicable experience and relevant ‘hard skills.’

Overlooking Your Accomplishments

If you are dead set on an industry and have proven experience to compliment your acquired skill-set, you should jump straight into your career accomplishments as the highlight of your resume and elevator pitch. Don’t waste precious space uncovering the basic details of your previous job, but rather provide perspective as to why you succeeded. Present your accomplishments effectively to hiring managers through the CAR approach (Challenge-Actions-Results): 

  • Challenge – What was the existing problem, need, or situation?
  • Actions – What did you do about the challenge?
  • Results – What outcomes did you produce? Quantify it!

*Pro-Tip: Utilize strong action verbs to begin your statements

Grammar & Spelling

Grammatical and spelling mistakes are the first in the book and easiest to occur, but they continue to surface. If you are not confident in your grammatical capabilities, run your text through a resource like Grammarly. There is no worse feeling as a job-seeker than losing out on a job opportunity due to one typo or one forgotten punctuation.

Failing to Adjust Your Resume

Whether you are locked in on pursuing a specific industry or job title or are broadening your horizon, each job is unique and requires your resume to be unique as well. If you are not tailoring your resume to each job posting you apply to, you are spoiling your chances before you even received a phone call. For example, pursuing an Inside Sales position with a telecommunications firm will vastly differ in qualifications or required skills from that of a Content Writer opportunity for the same firm. Likewise, submitting the same resume for sales positions with two different companies implies you failed to research the company, and that will not go unnoticed.

Nearly 75% say they believe finding a job has become more challenging in 2020. (Jobvite)

Not Providing Timelines

It may seem like a solid strategy to keeping your resume with a ‘neat and clean’ appearance, but checking for dates is a vital part of a hiring manager’s review. Without a clear timeline, you are implying you have an employment gap or a history of short stints with employers you want to keep secret. If you are fortunate enough to receive the benefit of the doubt, you can undoubtedly expect clarification to be desired on your first phone call with the hiring manager. 

Using an Objective Statement

Arguably the most outdated feature on 2019 resumes, this section often takes up valuable space atop job-seekers’ resumes. Focused on general aspirations and ‘fluff’ statements, most hiring managers will skip over the paragraph or, worse, mark it as an immediate red flag. Courtesy of your submitted job application, employers are already aware you are “motivated” and “looking for your next opportunity.” Instead, utilize this space to provide a career summary, or dive straight into your work experience with concise summaries under each position.

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Ditch These Obsolete Resume Guidelines

Are you failing to see results from your job-seeking efforts? A lack of ‘call-back’ interviews or responses from employers can be detrimental to morale. However, this does not always mean you are unqualified, but simply that you are not up-to-date with what today’s hiring managers are seeking.

If you are starting on your job search, there are guaranteed to be several elements you can discard from your previously used resume. Join us as we review four obsolete resume tricks revealed by our friends at The Ladder.

Using an Objective Statement

So you are looking for a new challenge to help you grow, and you aspire to make a positive impact? Big deal. Employers do not feel an urge to hear your vaguely described needs and desires because it does not help them evaluate your qualifications and skill-set. If you have not already, now is the time to replace your objective statement with a professional summary. Career expert Amanda Augustine (Top Resume) recommends your summary follow these guidelines:

“In three to five sentences, summarize your qualifications for the role you’re targeting and provide examples of how you’ve used the skills and experience you’ve gained to produce results and provide value to your previous employers.”

“References Available Upon Request”

Four words may not seem to be a massive waste of space, but with its heading, the brief section becomes an eyesore for hiring managers. The statement is a prominent, outdated cliché and therefore brings the job seeker no benefit. Your interviewer assumes references can quickly be made available, seeing that you are actively seeking their approval. If you do not have any references available, your chances at the job are minuscule. Although you should undoubtedly have individuals in mind, any mentions of references on your resume are unnecessary. 

Cramming Your Content to One Page

If you have minimal work experience, restricting yourself to one page of content is ideal. Forcing irrelevant details and work experience just to get to two pages is cretinous. However, when you possess work experience, education, and certifications relevant to the job application at hand, a two-page resume is more than merited. It is important to keep in mind that your second page will not receive nearly as much focus as your first, so it’s best to list your most relevant information early. 

“Most resume reviewers would rather read a well-laid-out, easy-to-skim, two-page resume than a one-page resume that jams too much information on the page.” -Kim Isaacs

Including Your Full Address

It would be rare to find someone who lists a mailing address as a preferred line of communication. With already listing your phone number and email address, including a full address can be seen as a waste of space on an already content-filled resume. Additionally, with the plethora of databases and employment-related search engine platforms, there is an increased risk in sharing your address. 

However, knowing a general location can be critical to an employer’s willingness to reach out. Limit your location data to the city/region and state. 

With all this in mind, what should your resume look like in 2020 & beyond? Our friends at The Muse recently laid out seven tips to help you stand out of the crowd and land that interview!

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🚩 Resume Red Flags 🚩

Your resume represents your career in two ways: what you have done in the past and what you hope to do in the future. In today’s competitive job market, the candidates have all the power since unemployment is so low. Your resume is what makes the first impression to potential employers, so you want it to be compelling and stand out among the crowd.

Although the job search and application process has changed thanks to technology, the necessity of a resume has remained unchanged. There are certain things that you should definitely include in your resume to be considered for the job. On the other hand, if you have any careless mistakes on your resume, an employer will likely toss it right into the “no” pile.

Our friends over at TopResume interviewed 379 former and current professionals involved in the hiring process (recruiters, hiring managers and human resources executives). They revealed 10 resume red flags that will derail your hiring chances before you even have the chance to interview.

Spelling and Grammatical Errors

This seems like a no brainer, but having any spelling and grammatical errors on your resume usually signifies a one-way ticket to getting rejected. This is particularly true when it comes to opportunities that go so far as to include being “detail oriented” in the job description.

Although these mistakes might be just that – a mistake – employers might view this as carelessness and disqualify you for the job. To ensure this isn’t the case, check out these proofreading tips for the next time you edit your resume.

Annoying Buzzwords and/or Obvious Keyword Stuffing

Thanks to the use of applicant tracking systems (ATS), employers don’t have to go through countless resumes before deciding who to interview for a job. While both a blessing and a curse for employers, there are ways for candidates to get around an ATS. One of the most popular tactics is the utilization of keywords.

Candidates should use keywords from the job description and include them in his or her resume before submitting the application. In doing so, the ATS will pick up on these words and will pass it along to the hiring manager. Job seekers need to be careful in doing this, however, as including too many keywords just for the sake of doing so will not only make your resume sound awkward, but also raise a red flag to the hiring manager.

Using keywords and buzzwords needs to be done in a natural manner. You should also avoid some of these most overused phrases if you want to improve your chances at landing an interview.

Being Too Generalized

Applying to jobs is easier than ever thanks to technology. However, often times due to this we as job seekers fall into the trap of being too lazy. This includes using a “spray and pray” method of applying to countless jobs and hoping for an interview anywhere. If you’ve used this method, chances are you created one generalized resume and sent it to each application. Hiring managers can pick up on these cookie cutter resumes pretty easily and often disqualify candidates who use one.

As a job seeker, you want to put forth the necessary time and effort to make your application a “can’t miss” for potential employers. This means you need to customize your resume for each job that you apply to. While it seems time consuming, it will all be worth it when you have an offer (or a few) to choose from in the end. This doesn’t mean you need to revamp your resume entirely for each job, but customizing each to the job to which you’re applying should be a given.

Managing Partner and Recruiter at ClarusApex, Stefan Lilienkamp said, “Lazy job applications for anything on the market without any tailoring is a complete deal breaker. End result, the candidate gets, in the best case, ignored, and worst case, blacklisted…”

As mentioned before, you should already be including keywords for the ATS to pick up on, so you can take it a step further and truly tailor it to each job.

Format/Design Is Too Elaborate

In something as competitive as the job market, job seekers will do some pretty wild things to stand out. While you want to catch the hiring manager’s eye, make sure it is for the right reason. There are stories of candidates sending hiring manger unique resumes in the form of an ingredient label, or what have you, a general rule of thumb when it comes to your resume is “less is more.”

If you have a solid background, your experience will speak for itself. Stick to a simple design where hiring managers can find what they are looking for with relative ease. If your resume is too elaborate, the ATS might not be able to find information either, and even if you have all the right keywords, etc., you might get rejected.

Wrap Up

For the rest of TopResume’s red flags, check out the full article here. Having a resume red flag is sure to derail even the most qualified candidate’s chances at getting hired. Before you apply for a new job, make sure that your resume is free of any of these red flags.

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