subject: 2 Easy Steps To Customize Your Resume To Fit The Position [print this page] If you have a professionally written resume then in most cases you wont need to customize it.
However, if the positions you are applying for vary from the direction of the originally written resume then you will need to make a few amendments to ensure the best chance of success for your job application.
The reason to customise your resume is to ensure you have the best resume written with wording that aligns directly to the position terminology (or language terms) used. This allows the reviewer to easily match your skills and strengths to see you are a good fit for their position.
The first step is to read the Position Description and underline or highlight the key phrases used to describe the requirements, skills and duties. Once you can see the words or duties they place emphasis on, you can amend your summary of skills which should be on the first page of your resume.
Ensure approximately 50% of the overalls skills are those matching the Position Description. Do not add the sentences word for word though as this will appear unnatural. All you need do is ensure the key word is used.
An example is the following advertised requirement "Must be able to demonstrate strong stakeholder engagement skills".
The Keywords in the above statement would be: strong stakeholder, engagement skills.
You could therefore add a skill on your resume such as:
"Comfortable with stakeholder engagement" or
"Stakeholder communication skills often highly regarded by colleagues"
The second step is to work some of the terminology (as we have described for your skills) into your duties or responsibilities listed in relevant jobs.
This is to enhance the consistency of information through you resume. Again avoid overdoing it just find past experience that is similar and reword the experience to conform with the advertised positions terminology.
Follow these steps and you will have a much better chance of having success with those individual applications that vary.
