How to match your curriculum Vitae/resume to the Job descriptions advertised

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. I hope this week has been very productive and fruitful so far. Thank God it is Thursday. I hope my last post on customising your resume to be result oriented has inspired you to do some work on your resume. Remember, if you need a second set of eyes to look at your resume, follow this link to drop your information and I will be sure to reach out to you as soon as I can. Don’t worry, your new job/career is closer than you think.

Let’s get right to the second tip for packaging your resume. – Match words on your resume to keywords used in the job requirements/descriptions that you are looking to apply to. Imagine this scenario, a lady wants a tall man, beard gang, God-fearing, oil and gas tycoon, and a Pastor as her life partner. Those are her specifications. If she is to choose someone out of a group of men, she is most likely to go for all the specifications she has stated. 

Like in this scenario, the girl is the recruiter. The recruiter states they want for example someone that has experience in social media marketing as a requirement. It is up to you to include "over 5 years of experience in social media marketing" under your skills. I used 5 years because a large chunk of us have been marketing our lives on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter since 2013. Our social media posts are "look at me I am having fun, I'm perfect, I'm loving, I love Jesus." All of these posts are a form of marketing. We put ourselves out there the way we want to be seen, that is exactly what company marketing is about. We have to get creative in our job application approach.

Furthermore, if the job description for the job advertisement states - Assist in the production and distribution of marketing and communication materials. A bullet under your experience should read something like this:

•          Assisted in the ideation, production and dissemination of materials for marketing and communicating purposes which resulted in 20 percent increase in sales.

What this bullet did was use not only match the keywords, it expatiated and added a valuable result to the action. This makes it easier for a recruiter spend a shorter time on your resume before putting you in the "yes pile" simply because they easily identified you possess the skills they want.

I understand that this process is time-consuming but realistically, the job search process is a job on its own. Let’s always consider the quality of applications over the quantity. If you can customise each resume to match what the recruiter needs rather than sending a generic resume each time. Trust me, your chances of getting a call for an interview is higher.

I will post the third part of this Professional Packaging series on Saturday to wrap up this series. Honestly, writing this series has been such a blessing to me. Based on the messages I have received, I am glad I wrote this post.

Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes – Annie Dillard.

With love,

Bibi.