How to Customize Your Resume to Any Job

With an overcrowded job market, computerized resume readers, and a struggling economy, it can be difficult to write a custom resume that stands out. There is, however, a secret trick to tailor your resume to a job description and write exactly what the employer wants to see.

What’s the secret magic trick?

Language.

Those digital resume readers and overworked HR employees are both looking for the exact same thing: language that speaks directly to the position and the company.

And how do you know exactly which words the computers and HR employees are looking for?

Because they tell you!! In the job description, on their website, on their social media, and any other spots the company communicates! Every time a company says something, they’re giving you a peek at who they are and who should work for them.

After reviewing 100s of resumes in a professional career office, I developed a few strategies to help you recognize the employer’s clues, use them to customize your resume, and write a perfectly tailored resume to the job- every time.

Let’s dive into my tips on how to tailor a resume to a job description!

The Best Way to Tailor a Resume: Keywords

The first step to tailor a resume to a job is to read the job description and pull out as many keywords as you can find.

These keywords can be:

• Adjectives they use to describe their ideal candidate
• The qualifications
• The responsibilities of the position
• Words they repeat in their mission statements
• Traits they use to describe the company

Once you’ve made a list of the keywords, use them to describe your experiences on your resume.

It’s important to use the exact same language as the position description, because computerized resume software gets programmed to look for those specific words and phrases.

For example, let’s say you had to multitask at one of your previous jobs, but the job description doesn’t say multitask. Instead, it says, “must be able to perform simultaneous duties.” For that position, your resume should then say “performed simultaneous duties…”

Let’s recap the first steps to customizing your resume:

1. Read position descriptions closely
2. Pull out the keywords, phrases, and action verbs they list.
3. Incorporate that exact language into your resume, so you instantly customize your experiences to the position and help your resume pass through any computerized programs.

Ready to stop relying on your resume? Watch my FREE training to learn how to transform your job search with networking!

Transferable Skills

As you’ve been scanning through job descriptions, I’m sure you’ve noticed that many of them are looking for some of the exact same skills- teamwork, communication, organization, and so on.

These skills are your new best friend. They’re called transferable skills, since they can be transferred to nearly any job.

Again, you want to scan the job description- this time to look for the transferable skills they emphasize. Then, use that exact wording to describe how you used those same skills in your previous positions.

People try to include their transferable skills in the Skills section of their resume, but that’s actually one of the biggest resume mistakes you could make!

Click here to learn about this and more of the Most Common Resume Mistakes- and my tips to fix them!

Instead of listing them in your Skills section, incorporate your transferable skills throughout your resume. That way, you’ll show the employer exactly when and how you used those skills- which helps prove you actually have them and makes you stand out!

Other common transferable skills include: leadership, ability to take direction, independent worker, team player, innovative, conflict resolution, active participation, etc.

For each of your experiences, try to use at least one transferable skill to match your resume to the job description. This way, you’ll accomplish 3 important things:

1. You’ll relate your experiences directly to the position and company.
2. You’ll demonstrate your soft skills to this employer in a more concrete way than if you listed them at the bottom.
3. You’ll send a computerized resume program a positive message about your qualifications.

Start looking for places to emphasize your transferable skills throughout your resume and they’ll be your resume bff!

Show, Don’t Tell

One of the best things you can do for a customized resume is show your relevant experiences and skills, rather than tell them.

I touched on this a little in the last section, but want to go into some more detail.

It’s important that, instead of simply listing your skills or flatly describing your experiences, you use numbers and examples to really show the employer who you are.

There are a couple different ways to start showing on your resume, rather than just telling:

• Quantify your experiences by adding related, impressive numbers and data from the position. These can be sales, growth, percentages, results, hours, team members, and anything else that would appeal to the employer.
• Describe your soft skills, rather than list them. Like with your transferable skills, you don’t want to simply list “teamwork” and “communication” under your Skills section (it’s for language and research skills). Instead, you want to use examples to show you have those skills.

Here’s an example of bullet points that show, rather than tell. This is for a camp counselor position at a summer day camp:

• Supervised and interacted with 100+ children aged 5-13 for 8 or more hours each weekday alongside 8 counselors and 1 supervisor
• Assisted with planning the camp’s 30+ field trips by communicating with camp supervisor, 8 counselors, and 100 campers’ parents
• Led groups of up to 19 children independently during large field trips, such as Hershey Park, and coordinated all-day supervision of 75 campers with 8 coworkers

By using numbers, demonstrating transferable skills like communication and leadership, and giving detailed examples in the bullet points, this description shows skills- instead of flatly listing them.

Take the time to write specific, related, and quantified bullet points to make your customized resume really stand out! Btw- here’s some more tips on how to write powerful, professional bullet points!

A Customized Resume is Key

While I might have implied this earlier, it’s important to say again: you have to submit a custom resume for every position you apply for.

I know, I know that’s a pain, but it’s truly the only way to tailor a resume to a job and write exactly what they want. 

Why?

It’s impossible to write one resume that speaks directly to every job you apply for.

To make it WAY easier to customize your resume, create a master resume. This insider hack will simplify and streamline the entire custom resume process!

To learn more about how a master resume will transform your application process, check out How to Write and Use a Master Resume.

Although it’s annoying, it’s beyond important you submit a custom resume for every position you apply for. This way, you’ll stand out because you created a document that speaks directly to the job and company.

Read Everything

Along with reading and rereading the job description, you should also read over everything else you can about the company.

What exactly do I mean by everything?

Read their website, staff pages, social media profiles, LinkedIn page, and so on, so you can learn what they value most. In those pages, you’ll find the language at the core of their company and the values they find most important in their staff.

Then, you take that language and- you guessed it- incorporate it into your resume. I know this seems like a lot of language to find, but you’ll start to see patterns and find out which words and phrases matter most to them.

Using language from more than just the job description is a great strategy to create a custom resume that speaks directly to the position and the company.

Standing out in the modern job market means you have to tailor a resume to a job description. This way, it speaks directly to the position and the company. 

To do this, find keywords and transferable skills from the job description and use that exact language in your resume. Also, make sure you show your experiences (don’t tell!), create a custom resume for every position you apply for, and read everything you can about the company online. Once you’ve written a custom resume in their language, you’ll def stand out from the stack of applicants!

Ready to stop relying on your resume? Watch my FREE training to learn how to transform your job search with networking!