Most job hunters understand the importance of creating a customized cover letter for each position they apply for. When it comes to the resume, these same writers often make a crucial mistake: unlike the customized cover letter, they use the same resume over and over in their job search.
Big mistake.
Tailor Your Resume for a Perfect Fit
Part of the job hunting process is research. You find out a company’s operating principles and gain insight into its corporate mindset. Armed with this knowledge you write a cover letter that shows how your qualities line up with the company’s plans.
Get more impact from your research by extending this process to the resume. Let’s look at the rough layout of a typical resume and discover how to custom fit your skills and experience to a company’s expectations.
Attention to Detail Catches the Eye
Why Objectives Matter
If your resume has a weak objective line, you may miss out on interview opportunities. If your objective line indicates that you are willing to settle for mere employment, you will be actively shunned by potential employers.
In the objective line, the specific always beats the general. Specific goals are better than poorly defined goals. Similarly, an objective tailored to a specific employer is far more effective than a one size fits all objective.
Compare the objectives line on your resume to the company’s mission statement. Do you see any congruence? A custom written resume objective should show a potential employer that your attitudes and goals are in agreement with that of the corporate culture.
Every Job Is Exactly the Same
Why Skills and Accomplishments Matter
So you are looking for a job at another company within the same field. Since your current job uses the same skills and values the same accomplishments, that means all you have to do is update the current resume and push it out the door, right?
Wrong.
Even within the same industry, companies will value certain skills more than others. One of your research goals should be to uncover the specific skills that will pull your resume out of your target company’s human resources slush pile.
Your accomplishments should be custom fit to a specific employer as well. This can be very important when moving to a much bigger company within the same field.
If you have included hard numbers with your accomplishments and you should those numbers might not look very impressive to a company that handles two or three times as much business as your old job. Convert hard numbers to percentages to preserve the impact of your accomplishments.
I’m Hard Working, Intelligent and Loyal
Why Qualities Matter
I’m hard working, intelligent and loyal. Well, who isn’t?
In the marketing world, a technique called branding establishes the identity of a specific product so that it can outsell other products that have virtually identical qualities.
Your perfect job attracts people with qualities very similar to your own, so merely showing that you have those characteristics is not enough. You have to brand yourself in a unique way if you want job hunting success.
Remember, just about anybody can write a one size fits all resume. Only you can write your custom fit resume. Good luck!
Author Resource:-
Land Job is a resource for job resumers and cover letters. For more information, please visit: http://www.landjob.com
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