When writing to someone on a personal level, you always correspond with the individual in mind. It should be no different in crafting your tech resume.
The entire document should be written with the awareness that the hiring manager will read it. Therefore, important questions to answer are:
- What do they want to know about me?
- How can I make it easy for them to read this?
- How do I fit with their work culture?
To successfully answer these questions and keep the hiring manager reading your resume, you should include the proper keywords, an employer-focus, how you meet the job requirements, and do all this in a truly professional manner. Professional resume writers can help you optimize these areas and aid you in defining and highlighting the ways you can help fill an employer’s talent gap.
Target Keywords in Your Tech Resume
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are used by most employers of any size to manage the applicant pool. ATS software will scan your tech resume looking for the particular words that highlight skills and knowledge required for the position. The more relevant keywords included, the higher it will be ranked by the software. When your information technology resume gets read by a real person, the keywords will continue to support the notion that you are a candidate worth interviewing.
Often the first people to review it are in support roles (e.g., a human resources representative or an administrative assistant), not the actual hiring manager. These individuals are assessing your resume based on the same list of keywords, so it is critical the keywords be present and skillfully deployed. If in doubt about how to put together a targeted document that demonstrates your success in technology careers, it is best to contact a professional resume writer.
Employer-focus
There is a tendency to believe the hiring process is all about you. After all, it is your professional life, experience, and accomplishments, so how can it be about the employer?
But hiring managers appreciate it when you help them to quickly see that you are a great candidate to fill their technology talent gap.
You do this by calling attention to your skills, attributes, and experiences that are in alliance with what the employer is looking for, which allows a hiring manager to see immediately that you’re a good fit with the organization and someone they want to meet. The candidate who insists on requiring the hiring manager to parse through a long and difficult document may not be as fortunate.
You can make your tech resume most effective by creating it to be user-friendly for the hiring manager. Do this by:
- Crafting an easy-to-read document. Assume that the hiring manager has no time to parse through tightly packed text. Use a format that directs the reader’s eye.
- Highlighting the relevant job titles, skills, and abilities. Align these with the advertised position by using examples of actual past successes.
- Tailoring to the advertised job. Information should be customized to the job posting, even when describing work at past positions.
- Beginning every bullet-point of experience or responsibility in the past with an action word. You need to convey a history of effectiveness, a sense of energy, and a strong track record.
- Emphasizing soft skills. This is more critical than ever, so highlight evidence of strong interpersonal skills, leadership skills, and other attributes needed in the role to position yourself as an excellent candidate. Of course, the details will vary based upon the organization and industry.
In most organizations, people are busy, with full calendars and no time to spare. This means that the people looking at your information technology resume are doing more skimming than reading. If in doubt regarding the best format, a professional resume writer is trained to write tech resumes so that they can be easily skimmed to find pertinent information about you.
How You Meet the Technology Job Requirements
You may not fit everything mentioned in a job posting but confidently call attention to those required skills and experiences you do possess. This means highlighting every skill, experience, license, certification, and type of accomplishment the employer requires that you can lay claim to. Emphasize the positives and let the employer ask you about the details when you meet. Job requirements can best be exhibited by writing to the following:
- Synergies between previous organizations and the hiring company in terms of culture and how you will fit in with them.
- Your experience and how it is applicable to their situation. This is where a professional resume writing service can help the hiring manager to “connect the dots” on where and how you can add value.
- Numbers and metrics that quantify the experience. No matter the position, it is possible to put some numbers to it (e.g., number of code pushes, lines of code, number of sprints, size of the team, etc.). The use of numbers lends credibility and helps the hiring manager to understand the size and scope and your contribution.
Keep it Professional
A resume is business correspondence, and therefore, it must be professional. There should be no slang or religious, political, and cultural references unless they are somehow relevant. Nothing should be a distraction from your objective: landing an interview.
The truth is, hiring managers expect your technology resume to be perfect. There is no room for typographical or grammatical mistakes. Grammatical and spelling errors say something about your attention to detail and how much you care, which are essential qualities needed in many jobs. In the era of spell-check and grammar correction software, there is no excuse. If you lack access to such software, then consider hiring a professional writer. It would be a shame to lose a job opportunity to someone else because of easily avoidable mistakes.
Putting it All Together In summary, thanks to the internet, there is competition for almost every advertised job. So, follow these guidelines when writing your tech resume:
- Think of what the hiring manager is looking for,
- Be a word miser by making every word count and turning some of those words into keywords,
- Don’t make it your personal biography,
- Make sure that it contains only information pertaining to the job and the employer, and
- Check your spelling and grammar.
A tech resume built on these best practices will be competitive, speak to the employer, and lead to interviews. When in doubt about any of these areas, consider hiring a professional writer to make your information technology resume the best it can be.