5 Steps to Update your Resume in 15 Minutes

Keeping your professional resume relevant, attractive and accurate is necessary to win you any job offer. Most people dislike resume writing because they start from scratch. However, according to resume writing experts, you can update your resume with Five Simple Steps.

Update Your Resume in less than 15 minutes

If job hunting in the 21^st century is taking a toll on you, this is the best time to transform with a 15-minute resume retouch. All you need to do is get a rough draft of your current resume and turn it around with the following best tips for updating a resume.

1.) Restructure and Revamp the Format

If your resume was written years ago, it is best to start with, format, style and structural choices, as there are many enticing options today. From functional to chronological and hybrid resume writing formats, you must choose a format or structure that applies best to your resume.

Structuring of the resume refers to the placement and choice of section headers in a resume. It is important to draft a resume that is compatible with automatic applicant tracking devices such as ATS as over 70% Hiring Processes to make use of it today. As a rule of thumb, experienced candidates must place their educational section after the work experience in the resume.

Choosing a suitable template is essential to present an appealing format and styling that boosts the value of your resume. For candidates with extensive experience, following a chronological format that lists the work experience based on the timeline works the best. On the flip side, if you have employment gaps in your resume, it is best to follow a functional format that places your relevant technical achievements ahead of professional accolades by disguising the missing years.

Moreover, in today’s competitive world, candidates must make use of innovative alternatives in format, structure and look of the resume to guarantee to get an interview call!

2.) Customize Your Resume For the Job You’re Applying to

Unlike a decade ago, you must customize the resume to suit the specific job you are applying to. Spanning from work experience to educational sections and summary or objective of the resume, candidates must use relevant technical experiences and sections that add value to their candidacy.

Expert resume writing coaches advice candidates to use not more than 50% of the technical vocabulary from the job description by the employer to pass common ATS tests. However, resumes with more than 95% similarity with the job description are liable for disqualification as well.

Candidates must specifically focus on strictly listing relevant skills to fit the responsibilities sought by the employer. Hiring managers and ATS software rummage hundreds of resumes every day to find candidates with precise skills or experiences that apply to the job. Hence, it is best to update your resume to fit the job you’re applying to.

3.) Condense the Length of your Resume

Do you know what the ideal length of a resume is? If you believe that maximum merits on a resume dictate the best length for a professional resume, you’re far from being right.

Resume coaches advocate candidates to stick to a 5MB or two pages threshold when drafting a resume. At the hiring desk, lengthy resumes are a surefire way to rejections as it takes longer to decipher the value points from such a resume.

You must convert lengthy paragraphs into short, concise and lucid bulleted points to highlight your core achievements and values as a candidate. Check your resume for redundant paragraphs for your early career days and strike them off if you find them. It is important to keep the hiring manager glued to your resume and the only way to do so is by cutting the clutter.

If there are work experiences describing irrelevant technical details with respect to the job description, eliminate it. This does not mean candidates must always restrict the resume to one page; but, more than two-pages in a resume prevents the reader from scanning your profile intricately.

4.) Update your Work and Education History

If you are updating the old resume, it is important to begin by updating your work experience and technical skills acquired in your recent job history. From recent recognition from relevant employers in the past to quantifiable professional achievements, there are many ways to add value to an old resume by revamping it.

Candidates must aim to write all the newly added skills relevant to the job before adding it to the resume. Restrict editing for later and kept adding new content to assess your principal values to upgrade your profile with. If you’ve added your personal LinkedIn Profile link or other similar links, it is important to update your online portfolio as most employers will assess the same before interviewing you. Resume coaches’ advice newbies to revise resumes once every few weeks or months to keep the resume updated at all times.

As a bonus, also revise your reference list and intimate the right people to prepare them for the official call, after confirming their availability.

5.) Research Resume Samples

Yet another smart way to upgrade your resume to meet the standards of winning resumes, you must research diverse resume formats applicable to your job application. Sample resumes enlighten new writers on the right style, format and even technical vocabulary that win the job.

Resume samples are easily available online and provide insight into how to professional furnish your personal and technical credits in a resume that gets you noticed.  They teach you smart ways to include relevant information in a professional resume, as well as tricks to avoid amateur resume writing errors.

In a Nutshell

It is important to present a resume that applies to the position offered and proves your dedication to the job. As a bonus tip, candidates must always proofread the resume twice, prior to its submission. It is natural to miss-spelling or grammatical errors when you’re proofreading a self-written document. Hence, ask a friend or family to scan your resume prior to submission to make it 100% error-free.

An easy way to prove your superlative candidacy is by making the profile exclusively applicable to the job by updating your resume. If you combine the other tips above, you will create a winning resume that paints a competent profile of you as a candidate.