According to academic research, a well-written resume is a key element to snatching a live interview with a potential employer. To successfully pass through the CV scanning process it’s essential to display well-organized information absent of fillers and cliches that make the reader lose interest in reading through the rest of your resume. Therefore, in this article, we have prepared five tips that should help anyone trim down an overly extensive CV and make it easy to read and understand.
Turn paragraphs into bullet points
If you list your achievements and provide a detailed presentation of each one, you will occupy too much space. The same goes for different positions, academic accomplishments, and other information that you could present in more than one sentence. There’s a simple resume editing trick that you could perform to shorten your content by more than a few sentences and it includes turning paragraphs into bullet points.
Instead of presenting a detailed description, make each block of text a single bullet point. Just a shortlist of your accomplishments would be enough to raise interest in you and you can provide details during your live interview.
Use a well-designed template
The structure is the foundation of any written content, which is why those that can’t create a good blueprint for their resume end up writing something of an autobiography. If you feel like you should exclude some portions of the content but you’re not sure what to leave out and what to keep, try searching for some templates online.
You can find a template that’s most appropriate for your industry and fill out the information just enough to maintain the design integrity. If you stay within the borders of the template, you won’t have to worry about too much information. Moreover, with a template document, you’ll have a form that works best for your industry, which means you’ll have more chances of appearing as a valuable candidate.
Change typesetting
Sometimes the word count is not the issue because your professional path has been full of experience and there’s nothing you can do to make your resume shorter through sheer word cutting. Change the font size where it’s possible and you’ll notice how the size of your resume appears reduced. Sometimes, if you want to emphasize a certain term, you can use bold or italic formatting instead of increasing the font.
It’s important to keep the font size easy to read, so don’t decrease it beyond the measure of good taste. You don’t want to irritate the person who reads it or make the entire resume unreadable.
Focus on essentials
If you include accomplishments that aren’t relevant to the position you are looking for, it might seem redundant to the recruiter. Remove from your resume those parts of the content that aren’t directly related to that which is most valuable to the business owner. This goes for both academic and professional achievements that you are understandably proud of.
If everything on your CV is linked to the position you applied for, then you will have a snappy resume that will create an image of the perfect candidate, built out of the most necessary elements for the job.
Look for professional assistance
One of the most popular ways to deal with resume editing among job seekers is to search for online services that could help with improving the content. Some agencies specialize in creating professional CVs according to users’ detailed instructions. Deadlines are most commonly the deciding factor why professionals reach out for online assistance because these agencies offer the ability to set a period when the resume needs to be completed.
Apart from the ability to edit a CV, online services also offer the ability to write an entire CV for their users, from the scratch. According to an article published by Forbes, the popularity of resume writing services created room for fraud so it’s important to stay safe while browsing through the internet.
Conclusion
These five simple tricks should help you organize your CV quickly and effectively. It’s of paramount importance to have a well-written resume that’s easy to read and remember. Keep in mind that your resume should present you as the best candidate for the job and intrigue the potential employer into wanting to know more about you so that you get that call to the interview. Apply one or all of these tips when you feel you need to trim down your resume to extend your chances of snatching the job you want.
