A resume is one of the most important documents you will ever own. It will open doors. It could help you land the job and life of your dreams. It is a passport to a multitude of different futures.
So what should your resume look like in 2021?
Communicate your Impact
In essence, the building blocks of a great resume have remained the same. It should be focused on your accomplishments and it should communicate the key parts of your skills and experience that make you suitable for the role you are applying for.
And it should do so in the fewest words possible.
So far, so boring, you might be thinking.
Well the good news is that your resume doesn’t have to be boring.
You are no longer constrained to boring black and white documents in Microsoft Word. You can use color. You can play with the format (a bit) and you can inject a splash of personality.
As long as your CV or Resume has great content and is in a format that can be read by the Applicant Tracking Systems used by many companies, you will give yourself a great chance of success.
Personally, I like to build my resumes in Google Documents. There are some nice templates you can use, it is easy to edit the documents and export them in a range of formats ((.Doc x) or PDF).
Sites like Canva have really lovely-looking resume templates, but they are not always a good choice because of the formatting which can’t always be easily read by Applicant Tracking Systems which parse plain text from your resume.
Ideally, your resume should be one column and in a style where your most relevant skills and experience will be read first by an automated system (or human recruiter). I have worked with a designer to build this template below. This one is for a recent graduate.
CV or Resume Formatting
Your CV or Resume should have your name and contact details at the top and be followed by a brief summary of a few sentences that outlines some of your top-line achievements.
Depending on what stage you are at with your career, you should follow the summary with a section on Professional Experience or Education.
If you are a student or graduate and just starting out, you might want to put your education above the professional experience.
For your education, you can list your modules if they are relevant to the kinds of jobs you are applying for.
If you are further along with your career, the section after your summary should be Professional Experience.
For each position, list the job title, company name, location and dates. In that order. There are sneaky ways you can do this while using minimal amounts of space.
I recommend the use of these |
You can then write your experience like so:
Marketing Manager January 2020 to February 2021
Google | London, UK
Under each heading for each role, you can add up to five bullet points that communicate your top-line achievements. Try to incorporate keywords whenever you can.
You can add additional sections on Leadership, Community, or Projects, depending on the strengths you want to communicate.
But there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to writing resumes.
The key takeaways are the essential elements, brevity, impact, context and results, remain the same in 2021 as in previous years.
Having said that, there is increasing scope to be a little bit more creative in 2021 as long as you ensure your Resume can be read by Applicant Tracking Systems.
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