Are you revising your resume before you turn in your application for a job each time?  Most are not.  In fact in a non-scientific poll I just ran on LinkedIn only 31% of 1787 participants said they were making the adjustment each time.  11% indicated they don’t revise the resume at all and 49% said that they do make revisions sometimes.

Why Revise Your Resume?

Some of you might be asking why should I revise my resume / CV before I submit it to be considered for a job?  Fair question.  The answer has to do with your competition and a paradigm shift in the way most applications are being processed.

First and most importantly right now the job market is ultra-competitive.  Many recruiters and business owners I speak to are telling me how they get hundreds or more applications to review for each job, sometimes in less than 24 hours.  With the large volume of resumes, you have just a few seconds to make a good first impression when a person reviews your resume.  If you’re using the right keywords, they are more likely to put you in the “contender” pile and not the “pass” pile.  At last check the average first scan of a resume was only six seconds, meaning you had six seconds to catch their attention.  We’ll talk about professional written resume / CV in a moment, but no matter who wrote your resume or CV, it needs to catch their attention by showing relevant experience and including the keywords that are contained in the job description.

My Resume was Written by a Resume Writer so I’m NOT Changing a Thing

I actually understand the mindset here and a few years ago I would have agreed 100% with it.  The problem with this mindset however is that the paradigm has changed.  A professional resume writer can make a huge difference and be extremely helpful in getting you very close to where you need to be for each job submission.  They can write you a master resume or several resumes to use in a variety of situations to help with all the latest ATS rules and get you through the front door so to speak.  The problem is that the aforementioned competition is high and you have to be a high enough percentage match to the keywords in any one job, that you earn the interview.  If you’re not making any changes to your resume to adjust for keywords, you’re likely getting high marks, respectable even, but not high enough to make the cut line for interviews.  Some people even consider this being ghosted, when in reality they just didn’t do enough to cut the mustard when it came to the rest of the submissions that were sent in for consideration as every job available will only interview a finite amount of candidates.  If you submit the 51^st best resume (in their rankings) and they only interview 50, then you’ve missed the cut even if you were qualified for the position and no matter how great your interview skills are.

Adjusting Keywords for The ATS to Win The Interview

The paradigm shift in hiring has been the mass implementation of the ATS (the applicant tracking system) by companies to help track applicants from the moment they create the job description through the moment the new hire paperwork is completed by whomever is hired.  Why did it change the game?  First you should know there are thousands of ATS programs out there and they don’t all work exactly the same way, however most have some form of artificial intelligence screen that looks at the components of your resume in a screen process that is used in part to determine your qualifications for the position you apply to.  The system then assigns you a score, as it does everyone else who applies.  What are they looking for?  Knock out questions include things like: are you eligible to work, do you have a degree, are you licensed?  After the knockout questions the next biggest differentiator is the keywords.  If you’re unfamiliar with keywords and how to use them, read Key Word Ninjas and I’ll help you get that squared away.  The bottom line is Keywords will help you get the interview or keep you from being asked to interview presuming you are qualified for the position.  Because the competition level is so high, you need to score as many keyword matches as possible.

Do I Need to Rewrite My Resume Each Time?

No, you don’t need a complete rewrite of your resume each time.  What you really need is a modification of your resume each time.  What you do in a nutshell is find the keywords in the job description, match them up with the similes you have in your resume / cv and then swap out your word for theirs.  So if you have sales in your resume and they are asking for an account executive, you would pull out your word sales and put in their word.  Then you go from no match points, to a match point earned.

This Does Take Time But It Will Help You Win

I know this requires more time and effort.  You can continue to apply to hundreds of jobs in hopes you earn an interview and never hear anything back.  The better strategy is to make the time investment to revise your resume before hitting submit, so you can earn that interview faster.  Remember that along with revising your resume I also recommend you spend time on social media networking and asking for referrals from your friends and former co-workers.  There are many more suggestions found in my article Earn The Interview so if you haven’t read that, please do so now.

Best of luck to all of you and I hope you find a job very soon.