How to Create a Standout Resume

By: Evangelia Leclaire, Master Coach at The Muse

You’re in the Right Place If. . .
• You’re rusty at resume writing and can use an expert’s opinion
• Your resume is irrelevant, outdated, generic, or poorly worded
• You want to customize your resume to jobs that interest you
• You want your resume to capture
• You feel like your resume is going into a black hole
• You want a concise and cohesive resume that captures the attention
of a recruiter and is ‘ATS friendly’
What We’ll Cover
• Reasons to Rock Your Resume

• How to Beat the ATS Systems and Grab the Attention of a Recruiter

• How to Write a Cohesive and Concise Resume

• Resume Formats that Rock

• Resume Dos and Don’ts

ATS and Reader Friendly Resume
• The ATS

• Recruiters, hiring managers, and headhunter

• Relevant key words

• Cohesive and concise

• Don’t derail the reader with irrelevant details

How Recruiters Read Resumes
• According to a study by The Ladders, recruiters spend six seconds
reviewing a resume

• “The Gaze Trace” - The path to reading a resume

• Include relevant key words and align your resume to the job
description with integrity

• Include achievements that indicate impact, scope, and metrics

The Gaze Trace
• A heat map showing the stickiest sections of a resume
How Recruiters Read Resumes
• Name and contact info

• Qualifications Summary: impact statement, scope, niche, and skills

• Current company, title, start and end dates

• Previous company, title, start and end dates

• Education
Resume Dont’s
• Don’t include your home address
• Don’t include images, text boxes, or fancy fonts
• It’s recommended to not include info that could lead to biases about
your age and/or personal details
• Don’t include irrelevant or outdated work experience
• Don’t have more than six bullets per experience
• Don’t use a font size less than 10.5
Resume Dos
• Customize your resume for every opportunity you pursue
• Create a relevant qualifications summary 
• Use familiar fonts: Garamond, Arial, Calibri, etc.
• Spell one - ten out. Numbers greater than ten are written numerically
• Add pops of color and bold relevant text
• Make it concise and easy to read
• Write achievement statements to explain impact, scope, and metrics
Resume Formats
• Stacked One-Page Resume:  Use if you have 10-years or less and you
can fit it onto one page

• Stacked Two-Page Resume: Use if you have 10+ years or more

experience and you can fit it onto two pages

• Two Column One Page Resume: Use if you are in a creative field, such
as graphic design or motion picture animations
Components of a Stacked Resume
• Full name and contact info
• Qualifications: impact statement, scope, niche, character, key words
• Expertise 
• Professional experience: company, role, dates
• Education
• Technical Skills
• Community Service
Revise with the Recruiters Point of View
• Use the job description as a baseline for your revisions
• Make it easy to read
• Focus on the stickiest sections
• Include a qualifications section that positions your impact statement,
relevant scope of experience, niche, and skills
Jobscan
• Use jobscan.co to identify keywords to use in your qualifications
summary and throughout your resume

• Input your existing resume into the fields in one column along with
the copy from the job description into the fields in another column

• Jobscan will populate the keywords

Put Keywords into Context
• Qualifications Summary

• Current and previous work experience

• Current and past job titles

• Technical skills section 

• Education
The Qualifications Summary
• In this section, you have the greatest opportunity to custom-tailor a
relevant resume. It’s the stickiest section of the resume
• Impact statement, scope, niche, character, key words
• Introduce your profession and skill set as its relevant to the position. 
Inject some personality.
• Create a statement to describe your relevant competencies and
character traits; don’t use too many adjectives 
• Add relevant keywords (found through Jobscan) that will boost your
resume up in an ATS
The Qualifications Summary
The Qualifications Summary
The Qualifications Summary
Expertise In. . .
Expertise In. . .
The Experience Section
• Describe the scope of your work

• List achievements, not responsibilities

• Add add power verbs that are relevant to the job description

• Don’t use power words more than once within each experience

• Keep bullets within one - two lines

The Experience Section

• Highlight your achievements with scope of impact, reach, and results

• Quantify using percentages, dollars, numbers, etc.

• User powerful action verbs

• Include core functions of the job description within the bullet points a
The Experience Section
The Education Section
• Including your graduation date is optional, although many are curious
to know about your education level and graduation date

• You don’t need to include GPA or honors societies

• Include study abroad experiences

Spell Check
• Run through Grammarly

• Have it reviewed by a professional resume writer or a someone who is

great with grammar
Kudos for caring about your career.
Want more info?

https://careerreadysetrock.com/yourresume