Ways to Personalize a Resume

Job searching is a tough job on its own. As recruiters get to see a 1-2 page document instead of the candidate at first, you must be prudent of how the resume defines you.  To personalize a resume, all you need do is retouch a few sections to make it uniquely relevant to fit the job offer.

Personal Skills to Add to a Resume

Personal skills consist of interpersonal or transferable skills in a resume that are unique and subjective to each person. A good resume mandatorily requires personal details about the candidate, but unless you know what to add where there are high chances of creating many errors in the resume.

Here are prominent personal or subjective skills that add value to the candidacy using a resume.

1. Leadership

Your ability to lead as a manager or C-Level executive is ideal when recruiters are looking for resumes with leadership skills. You can demonstrate multiple soft skills such as Management, Demonstration, Training and Conflict Management for a Leadership Resume under the leadership section.

2. Communication

Candidate’s ability to express opinions clearly in multiple languages and in writing is considered a boon to the recruiter. It is best to research with the thesaurus to expand your vocabulary on the resume to render a good impression on the reader. From hosting Staff Meetings to resolving feuds or conflicts in the office, there are many skills to list your expertise as a communicator in a resume.

3. Organization

Your ability to organize and arrange events by prioritizing each process is important to the resume. It can prove traits such as discipline, analysis, and management of teams and business processes.

4. Teamwork

By proving that you are a team player, you are also proving the managerial and leadership traits within you. Candidates must express personal skills in the resume such as cooperation, listening, brainstorming and collaboration to elaborate skills of teamwork.

5. Commitment

Your dedication to projects expresses your passion towards the field as well. Hence, use skills such as dedication, promptness, punctuality, and perseverance to establish your genuine zeal towards the job.

6. Flexibility

Hiring Managers prefer candidates with flexible working hours as it gives more room for overtime or extra hours if need be. Listing your ability to adapt to new situations is hence another bonus skill to include in the resume, provided you’re a flexible candidate. Candidates must include their ability to grasp things fast as well as available working hours to build up the personal skills section in the resume.

7. Progressive

Mention skills of assessment, as it is easy to prove the progressive nature of your career graph with the same. If you practice improvement exercises such as kaizen in your work ethics, you must make space in the achievements or skills section of the resume to add it. Remember to list skills such as Analysis, Risk-Assessment, Continuous Evaluation and Improvement to exemplify your candidature.

How to Customize a Resume for the Job

Customizing a resume is not limited to, the addition of personal skills to the resume as it is also referred to as customizing the resume. It is important to customize your resume for every job application that you apply to, in order to receive an interview call.

With the help of resume customization, you can create a resume that fits the requirements sought by the employer like a gem!

1· Intensive Research

In order to present an authentic resume that fits the job role, in-depth research is inevitable.

The first step to customize your resume for making it relevant to your job application is by collecting sample resumes relevant to the job from online resume experts. You must compare and contrast your resume with the latest resume formats and decide which parts to redo in the new resume.

2· Revamp for Relevancy

The next step to customize your resume for a job application is by adding relevant and applicable keywords from the resume and popular resume samples. It is important to insert at least 50% identical keywords directly from the job description to comply with popular Resume Tracking Applications such as ATS in a resume.

This is where you must shortlist relevant skills and achievements from the resume to prove your candidacy for the offered position.

3· Add Online Portfolio

A lucrative trend seen in latest resumes, online portfolio not only personalizes the resume but also increases its value. Adding your LinkedIn profile or Website Portfolio URL to the resume as a footnote or underneath the contact information is ideal to make a personalized resume.  Do not compress the same into headers or footers as it scrambles the document rendering it futile.

4· Upgrade Skills

Candidates may also place the skills section underneath the contact information to make the resume exclusive from other candidates, since the beginning. Second, only to work experience, hard and soft skills in a resume with specific results are considered effective to impress hiring managers.

Your skills set in the resume must include computer application skills if you are a tech-savvy person.  In addition, list the software applications you’re acquainted with separate bulleted points.  It is best to shortlist the relevant personal skills and add it to the resume strategically to enhance your candidacy.

5· Do not Lie on your Resume

Another important instruction to keep while customizing your resume for a job is keeping it simple. It is natural to be tempted to embellish your achievements and skills on a resume; however, candidates must remember that lying on a resume is illegal if you fabricate the educational qualifications.

It takes but a few seconds for HR Managers to collect the detailed background check on any candidate. Hence, avoid adding cooked up stories in your resume. In addition to immediate termination, fabricating resume education can also lead to cancellation of unemployment benefits or jail term.

6· Change the Look

If you really want to customize your resume to resemble your personality, format it with a unique choice of font style, size, and graphics to make it visually appealing. Candidates must always choose a sans serif font with 12-point size in official resumes to maintain its readability on a variety of screens with ease.

To prevent the resume template from changing characters due to chaotic formatting on different readers, you can format the resume using a PDF converter!

Conclusion

Customizing your resume is important to avoid being rejected as a generic, spam or duplicate resume. Adding personal skills to your resume with reference to past work accomplishments establishes your candidacy clearly to the recruiter.