Six Tips for Editing Your Resume - Rothman

1. Write a first draft of your resume. Write it in reverse chronological order, with your most recent job first. Now, put it away for a few days, while you do other things. Your subconscious will work on it while you work on the rest of your job search. Your subconscious is working on the details.
2. Now it’s time to do the hard work of the details for your resume. Especially for the most recent work on your resume, fill in the details. Assume you will write in prose here. Use good grammar. Don’t worry about the length of your resume yet. You can trim later. For each line of your resume, explain what you did, how you did it, and how you added value to the organization. Use numbers about time saved on projects, cost saved on projects, customers added or retained, revenue added, that kind of thing. If you can’t describe how you added value, does that line belong on your resume?
3. If you have keywords, put those on the bottom of the resume, after all your experience. Do not clutter the most valuable part of your resume, the top, with keywords. Yes, I know the ATS wants to see keywords. The ATS is a robot. The ATS doesn’t care where the keywords are. The human reading your resume does care.
4. Check for typos. This is where you can run your resume through Grammarly’s online grammar check and see what Grammarly says. Does Grammarly say, “Schlub. Not readable. Inconsistent grammar.” Or, does Grammarly say, “Professional. Your previous managers, your colleagues, even your mom would be proud.”
5. Ask other people to review your resume. Does it make sense? Would they want to hire you, based on this resume? Have you boxed yourself into a job that doesn’t exist, or a domain that is shrinking? This is the time to ask.
6. Now, see how long your resume is. If it’s longer than two pages, what do you need to trim?

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