3 Tips to Stand Out in the Job Market During COVID-19

With all of the uncertainty surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic, the job market is getting crowded, and it might keep getting more and more crowded. In this kind of environment, you absolutely need your resume to stand out. I recently spoke to Andrew Seaman, a writer on the #GetHired blog on LinkedIn, about how job seekers can make their resumes stand out. There are four basic tips I recommend you take as soon as possible to help get your resume in shape.

Start With a Strong, Position-Focused Career Snapshot

Still have a bland, generic career summary or career objective at the top of your resume? Get rid of it, and replace it with a career snapshot that is tailored for the position this resume is for. Use keywords and skills specific to the industry and the position, and focus the language on how your skill set matches the company’s needs. Use numbers and stats – things like how much you increased revenue. Make it brief, quantifiable, compelling, and smartly targeted.

Highlight How You Overcome Challenges

We are all dealing with a changing world right now, and companies are facing the need to pivot services, adapt working environments, and deal with the economic fallout of the Coronavirus pandemic. This means they want to know that their employees are resilient and can handle challenges. Think back on your career and how you’ve solved tough problems in the past, or how you’ve gotten creative in your thinking to find and implement a successful solution. Highlight some of these achievements on your resume to show potential employers that you have the resilience and problem-solving skills that they are looking for.

Use Call-Outs

Highlight important information and make your resume stand out visually with call-outs. What do I mean by call-outs? It could be a sidebar titled “Notable Achievements” or perhaps testimonial quotes from former clients, set off in boxes at the side or bottom of the resume. Use keywords in your call-outs, and tailor them to match the position you are applying to.

And the fourth tip isn’t really about your resume, but it’s important all the same:

Update & Improve Your LinkedIn Profile

What’s the first thing you do when you want information about something? You turn to the internet. Hiring managers and recruiters do the same thing. A polished and impressive LinkedIn profile will help get you noticed, potentially before they even read your full resume. Take the time to get your LinkedIn profile optimized and ready for primetime.

You can read the full article with these tips on LinkedIn here. For even more resume writing and career advice, check out the Great Resumes Fast blog. We’re adding new material all the time, and even have articles about things like working from home effectively while your kids are at home too.

Now you can increase your LinkedIn profile views by 40x and your visibility with recruiters by 17x with this free LinkedIn Profile Checklist:

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If you’re not getting the responses that you hoped for from your resume, take a few minutes to review the following five critical components to an effective resume. You’ll find out what your resume is missing, fix it, and start receiving more responses. Listen to this podcast episode now: The 5 Must-Have Components of an Effective Resume.

Also, check out: 3 Strategies for Summarizing Your Experience When Transitioning Career Fields.

For more great job search and career content, follow me on Linkedin. You can send me an invite here.

Are you tired of your resume being rejected? I know how frustrating it is to submit your resume and receive no response. I hate seeing qualified people never breakthrough the screening process. It shouldn’t be that way. That’s why I created this guide with 178 action verbs and high-impact phrases to improve your resume and I encourage you to download the FREE PDF so you can start seeing better resume response rates!