Industry Specific Resumes
What is the best style of resume?
There are a number of different types of resumes. There is the skill based resume, the chronological resume, there is more of an essay type of resume. I say toss all of those out. I don't use them and I don't recommend them. Employers like to see resumes that are very easy for them to read and to use. If you think about someone who gets 100 to 200 resumes on their desk every day, that's a lot of reading. It's a lot of information to have to go through. So if you can make their job easy for them by using a lot of headings, bullet points, making the resume skimmable and easy to read, that's going to make your resume really stand out from the competition. So keep the resume chronological. What's your current position? What did you do there and then go back from there. Then make sure you include your education and your continuing education, things like that, and any other types of experience that you've had. If you've had internships, if you've been involved in different types of committees and maybe you've gotten a lot of leadership experience because you volunteered with the Boys and Girls Club. That's important information to include on your resume as well.
What is an "industry-specific resume"?
An industry-specific resume is one that is highly targeted and focused to a particular niche. Whether that be health care, banking, accounting, whatever that might be. Every resume should be industry-specific. Every resume should be specific, not only to the industry, but to the particular position you're applying for. It needs to be that focused and that targeted in order for your resume to stand out from the competition. Generic resumes are not the way to go, because employers simply don't have time to glean from a generic resume. "How can this person fit into our company?" They want to see those key words that match up with the job description they are trying to fill.
How do I create an industry-specific resumes?
Well if you've had experience in any particular industry and let's just say healthcare. Maybe you've worked in a number of different types of healthcare positions, your resume is already industry-specific and so what you need to do from that point is maximize the infomation that you can provide for every position you've held and then also think strategically in terms of "How can I beef up the experience that I have in this particular industry? And so that might include joining different types of professional healthcare associations. If you are a nurse joining different types of nursing associations, maybe writing a couple of articles for nursing publications, that sort of thing. That will really help beef up that resume and will take you to the next salary level very, very quickly. But again, it is all thinking strategically. How do I leverage what I have been doing into where I want to go?
How do I tailor my resume if I'm changing my career?
If you're changing your career, it's absolutely critical that you restrategize your resume to fit the new career. There has to be something so that the employer can connect the dots between your old career and your new career. Whether that is getting an internship in your new career, joining professional associations that are associated with your new career, volunteering in an area that is associated with your new career, make it make sense to them. That's very, very important. So anything that you can possibly do that is associated with the direction you want to move into, by all means, get involved and include that information on your resume.
