Career Expert Reveals 10 Tips To Land Your Dream Job

Linkedin Fatigue is a real thing.

Blindly reaching out to everybody you (and your overbearing mother) know is exhausting.

Getting the “Circle back in the Spring when we are taking applicants” message is defeating.

While so much of your job search is determined by the higher powers of Human Resources, your resume is one thing that is completely in your control.

We know the word resume makes you reach for your "In case of Emergency Prozac," so we are making things a little easier for you. And your unmotivated friend who asks to see your resume for “inspiration.”

We sat down with Melissa Trager, founder of Resume All Day, a professional services company that works with young professionals on their resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, interviewing skills, undergraduate and Graduate School essay applications.

See Also: Female Powerhouse Alissa Benishai Reveals Her Secrets To Success

Melissa attended The University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business and has professional experience working for three Fortune 500 companies.

In her free time, you can find her shopping, taking a reformer Pilates class, and eating Italian food.

Take advice from the career connoisseur herself, and stand out amongst all the other sorority girls trying to land that Incoming Buyer role at Bloomingdales.

1. Use a plain template and select an easy-to-read font. Times New Roman, Garamond, and Calibri are some of my favorites. Avoid Comic Sans like you would avoid your friend whose boyfriend’s best friend’s sister was just exposed to Covid.
2. Include contact information at the top of the resume so a recruiter knows how they can get in touch with you. Please don’t put your Instagram or Vsco. Even if it’s for a creative job. Nobody cares that you still edit your pictures with C1.
3. Use a professional e-mail address. [email protected] won’t cut it.
4. Eliminate any objective statements that are super vague and wordy. Recruiters spend an average of six seconds looking over candidate resumes. Yes, you heard us correctly. Six seconds. It is more digestible to read bullet points than a paragraph in this short amount of time.
5. Start each bullet with a strong action verb. Think big words like “Launched” “Spearheaded” and “Managed.”
6. Quantify your experiences whenever possible to show the tangible impact you made in each role. For example, were you able to increase the company's Instagram account following by 20%? Save the company $10K?
7. Do not repeat skills to fill up blank space. Each bullet should highlight a different skill set or project you completed to show you are a versatile, well-rounded candidate.
8. Be consistent with tenses. Write current roles in the present tense and previous roles in the past tense.
9. Add extracurricular experiences such as volunteer work, club memberships, and organization involvement outside of your professional role to show other interests and ways you spend your time. Contrary to popular belief, whoever is reading your resume is a real person! Show them that you are, too.
10. Include relevant keywords for the types of roles you are applying for. To figure out what these are, read over different job descriptions and you will notice that the same words appear in preferred qualifications sections. However, you are encouraged to update your resume to fit the specific needs of a particular role.