43 Resume Tips That Will Help Get You Hired

When you haven’t updated your resume in a while, it can be hard to know where to start. What experiences and accomplishments should you include for the jobs you’ve got your eye on? What new resume rules and trends should you be following? And seriously, one page or two?

Well, search no more: We’ve compiled the best resume advice out there into one place. Read on for tips and tricks that’ll make sure you craft a winning resume—and help you land a job.

Telling Your Story

1. Think of your resume not as a comprehensive list of your career history, but as a marketing document selling you as the perfect person for a the job. For each resume you send out, you’ll want to highlight only the accomplishments and skills that are most relevant to the job at hand (even if that means you don’t include all of your experience).


2. Keep a resume master list on your computer where you keep any information you’ve ever included on a resume: old positions, bullet points tailored for different applications, special projects that only sometimes make sense to include. Then, when you’re crafting each resume, it’s just a matter of cutting and pasting relevant information.

Formatting

7. Use a basic but modern font, like Helvetica, Arial, or Century Gothic. And make your resume easy on hiring managers’ eyes by using a font size between 10 and 12.

Work Experience

12. As a rule, you should only show the most recent 10-15 years of your career history and only include the experience relevant to the positions to which you are applying.


13. No matter how long you’ve been in a job, or how much you’ve accomplished there, you shouldn’t have more than 6-7 bullets in a given section. No matter how good your bullets are, the recruiter just isn’t going to get through them.

Education

24. Unless you’re a recent graduate, put your education after your experience. Chances are, your last 1-2 jobs are more important and relevant to you getting the job than where you went to college is.

Finishing Touches

38. Ditch the phrase “References available upon request.” If a company wants to hire you, it will ask you for references—and it will assume that you have them. There’s no need to address the obvious (and doing so might even make you look a little presumptuous!).


39. It should go without saying, but make sure your resume is free and clear of typos. But don’t rely on spell check and grammar check alone—ask family or friends to take a look at it for you (or get some tips on how to edit your own work).

See all 43 tips and the complete article