How to Tailor Skills Sections for Job Descriptions

As a recruiter, I love a 'Skills' section on a resume. It catches my attention BUT that doesn't always mean it leads to me scheduling an interview. This mistake is common across resumes including a 'Skills' section but not landing interviews. The mistake is overlying on your 'Skills" section without fleshing it out in your 'Work Experience' section. Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s say I was applying to a recruiter job with a requirement of sourcing passive talent using LinkedIn Recruiter. Based on the job requirements, I'd highlight relevant experience in both my 'Skills' and 'Work Experience' section.   Within my ‘Skills’ section I’d have “LinkedIn Recruiter, Passive Sourcing Strategies, Boolean Search Strings”. (because of the relevance to the job requirements) I’d call this out in my 'Skills' section to catch attention. To convert that attention to interest I would continue to build upon it in my ‘Work Experience’ section. This is how I'd flesh out my ‘Skills’ section in my “Work Experience” section. “Developed passive sourcing strategies using Boolean strings in LinkedIn Recruiter to hire technical talent resulting in a 37% reduction in time to fill” This shows WHAT I know relative to the job requirements in the 'Skills" section. That catches attention. Then I showed HOW my skills were used in the 'Work Experience' section. Showing how actually gives context on the impact I had using the skills the job needs. The 'Skills' section can be great in showing WHAT you know. But that isn't enough. Recruiters are looking for HOW you used what you know. A 'Skills' section should be used in tandem with your 'Work Experience' section, not as a substitute. (PS: When I say 'Skills', do not include soft skills. I'm begging you.)

How to personalize your resume? Having reviewed resumes of early career professionals, I noticed the same problem over and over again: generic description of responsibilities per experience. Nowadays, ChatGPT makes resume generation convenient with just you providing basic information about your past work experiences. However, the output can be generic, and this may not distinguish you from others with similar career trajectories. The key to standing out lies in the specifics of your experience: 📍 Provide details about your actions and the skills employed in accomplishing tasks what projects have you done? which customers do you specialize in serving? what actions you've done or skills you have? Look up keywords and skills in job descriptions of your ideal positions, and make sure to use the same way to describe what you've done. 🎖️ Elaborate with numbers; don't just describe, quantify It's not only about what you've done, but how well you've done it. Add numbers or list achievements to highlight the impact of your contributions. ⭐️ Add a summary of your experience at the top Think about where you want to go, and add details that would appeal to a recruiter from that field. Add number of years of experience, in which profession, specializing in which problem space or clients. Highlight 1-2 key achievements. 🎯 Bonus: Fine-tune your resume for each job application using ChatGPT Use ChatGPT to further customize your resume by putting your personalized resume alongside the specific job application in the prompt. Remember to edit/review the output to ensure accuracy and important information about your impact and contributions are not lost. What other strategies do you consider effective for personalizing a resume? #jobsearch #resumewriting #jobsearchtips #resumewritingtips #chatgptprompts #chatgpt #resumetips #linkedintips #jobhunting #customizedresume

📝 Resume Tips for Success! 🚀 This morning, I had the pleasure of joining 50strong's Resume Q&A for the military community. Your resume is your ticket to success and it's an area where I see a lot of veterans fall short! I'm so glad my talent acquisition teammates and I were able to answer questions and speak candidly about this topic. Cassandra Glubzinski | Missy Rinkenberger | Jamie McCall | Jon Snider | Stephanie Markich | Chantal DeWall | Kandi Tillman Here were some top tips from the call: 1. The Myth of AI - The vast majority of companies don't have AI that reads your resumes. In most companies, it's a human reading them! You're going to get farther by creating a clean, organized, and relevant resume than using all the tricks online to "beat the ATS." 2. Tailor Your Resume - An "AI" is not looking for "keywords" but a human is looking for certain qualifications and experience! Make sure your resume is translated to some extent (it doesn't need to read 100% corporate but avoid heavy military jargon). You can use tools like JobScan and plagiarizing tools to measure the comparability between your resume and the job description. 3. Formatting Matters - we went over several points here! Generally, the consensus is your resume should be no more than 2 pages long. Avoid Canva/Figma templates or other overly graphic resumes unless you're looking for a role in graphic design or something else in the creative field. 4. Proofread, proofread, proofread! - As a recruiter, there's nothing quite like seeing a bunch of misspelling and grammatical errors on a resume and then seeing "Attention to Detail" under the Skills section. 5. Highlight Your Skills - Include a Skills section (preferably near the top!) to highlight your key strengths. Focus on things that make you unique! Do you have experience in SQL or Tableau? Hard skills should take priority over soft skills. And if the job description mentions particular skills they're looking for, you should definitely make sure that's reflected in your Skills. Remember, your resume is your introduction to the company! Make it 🎇 SHINE 🎇 and make it feel like YOU! #ResumeTips #JobSearch #CareerAdvice