Custom is King

We have all seen the resume writing advice of customizing your resume to match the role you are interested in. I realize this sounds like a lot of work, so I wanted to help explain WHY  it is important to help you decide how best to approach it. It’s best to think about this from the perspective of all of the people who will be reviewing your resume.

1. Robots: as I shared on a recent tweet, the robots are watching. Before your resume can even get into the hands of a  recruiter, let alone a hiring manager, they often get scrubbed and scanned by an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS. In order for these systems to work, the key words and titles to look for are entered in, often based on the job description itself. According to this infographic, 75% of candidates are screened out before a human touches it. So, if you don’t have the specific keywords they are looking for, the robots will make it nearly impossible for you to make it through this first cut. The best way to know what words they are looking for is to literally copy them from the job description exactly as written.
2. Recruiters: chances are, the next person to review your resume will be an internal or external recruiter. In many cases, this person knows very little about the role or department you will be working in, so they will now know nuances or be able to extrapolate how skills connect unless they are written in the exact same way as the job description itself. This person’s job is to weed out candidates, not look into your description and try to make it fit. So, you need to make your qualifications for the job super simple to understand. The job description calls for project management experience, you list project management in your experience. 
3. Hiring Managers: Once a hiring manager gets your resume, they will be looking for the skills that are important to them. Guess what? Since they more than likely wrote the job description, the qualifications and experiences they included in it are what they value. Beyond that, so is the story your resume is telling them about what you have done elsewhere and why it will add value for their team. Customizing your resume not only ensures nothing is lost in translation, but it reflects that you care enough about getting the position to spend the time to make it matter. 
4. Interview Panels: Now, because you are awesome, you have an interview. You go in to meet various people to help share how you are best qualified to join the team. And what do they all have a copy of? Your resume! Like the hiring manager, they are going to be looking for the specific strengths you will be bringing to the team, so having the details included here will be important. And, as before, it also shows that you really want to work there, which is important for them to see. They want to know that you are going to be a great new coworker, who is as  excited about working for their company as they are. So take the time to show them that by customizing your resume story!