Tips to edit your resume like an expert

A resume is no longer a list that collates your professional experience and responsibilities. It has been reinvented as a smartly crafted marketing pitch, created with the singular aim of selling you as a candidate to prospective employers.

How does a professionally edited resume differ from its unedited counterpart? An editor approaches the document from the point of view of an outsider — usually an employer. This way, he knows instinctively which parts to embellish and which to leave out. With the deadwood out of the way, your resume appears more polished and focused.

Resume writing may be a specialized skill but it can be learnt. Give your resume a professional edge by following these tips:

Focus on your achievements

Employers are mainly interested in one thing — the value you can bring to a company. Your resume must address this question in detail. Don’t emphasize only your roles and responsibilities; focus on your accomplishments instead. You want to tell the company what you can do for them by citing examples of what you have achieved for your employers in the past.

Create a sales pitch

Gone are the days when a resume was a laundry list of your career and responsibilities. Resumes these days are aggressive sales pitches intended to grab the reader’s attention and convince him or her that you are the best fit for the job. Think like a marketing person and adopt creative strategies to make your career look good. Your resume is like a display in a shop window. Showcase only the best. Change the slant or perspective of what you want to say to make it more appealing and word each entry carefully to elicit the best response. Be careful not to stray from facts at any point.

Weed out all extra information

Keep chipping away at all the extra details until you get a focused document that’s relevant to the job and company you are applying to. Hiring managers spend only a few seconds on each resume so supplying extra information may sometimes lead to employers reading only those bits and missing out the more relevant parts.

Use action verbs

Using action verbs such as administered, analyzed, delegated, controlled, addressed and exceeded add dynamism to your resume and tend to catch the reader’s eye. Use action verbs liberally - and appropriately - to make your resume compelling.

Grammar and consistency

This is the easiest part to address and the most important. There can’t be bigger eyesores than spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in a resume. Be absolutely sure there are no language errors and keep the style consistent. If you write 25 December in one sentence and December 25 in another, you may be marked as either lazy or careless.