According to Time Magazine you have only 6 seconds for your resume to impress a recruiter, here are our top tips for making your resume stand out from the crowd.

1. Personalise your resume to the job

When you apply for a job it is important to understand that there will be a lot of other applications going to the recruiter, so your resume to needs to stand out. Taking the time to personalise your resume to the position your applying for, will show the recruiter that you are really interested in the position and they are more likely to keep reading.

2. Check your spelling and your grammar

Simple errors in your spelling and grammar may seem silly and it may feel like recruiters are picking on every little mistake, but there is a reason for this. Ensuring that you have spelt everything correctly and your grammar is correct makes you stand out from the crowd and makes it appear that you care about your application. I love the program Grammarly which is free and it will pick up on any spelling and grammatical errors.

3. Length of your Resume

Your resume is a resume, not a thesis. The perfect length for a resume is 2 pages.

4. Take out any unnecessary information

There is a lot of information that doesn’t need to be on your resume and there are plenty of different reasons why, it could be the information just isn’t relevant to your application or the information could lead you to be unknowingly discriminated against. Here are some things to leave off your resume:

• Your date of birth
• Nationality
• Marital Status
• Religion
• Parent’s Occupations
• Your picture

5. Make sure your email address is appropriate

We all set up email address when we were younger and they were normally something silly, but it is important to remember that you are selling yourself on your resume and do you want to be judged on your teenage email address? Email addresses like Shazzalovesparties@hotmail.com or similar, tends to turn most recruiters off.

6. Your Education

Your education is very important but keep it relevant, you don’t need to list where you went to Primary School.

7. Your Work Experience

Your work experience is one of the most important things on your resume but it doesn’t need to be 5 pages long. Keep your experience section clean, uncluttered and relevant. A future employer doesn’t need to know everything you were responsible for at your part time job during high school.

8. References

The lucky last tip I have for you is about your references. My opinion is that it is best to put “References Available Upon Request” on your resume, but if you do want to list your references make sure that your references know that they are listed as a reference for you. As a recruiter there is nothing worse than calling references who have no idea what or who you are talking about.

I hope that these tips help you to pass the 6 second mark, so that a recruiter or future employer can get to know you and see everything that you have to offer!