5 WAYS TO INCREASE THE CHANCES YOUR RESUME WILL GET NOTICED

You may have the knowledge, the skills, and the experience necessary to land the job, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your resume will catch the attention of those most directly responsible for deciding who will receive an offer of employment.
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The fact of the matter is that company officials receive a large volume of resumes, so much so that it’s actually physically impossible to read them all.  So what does that mean?

It means that if a hiring manager looks at your resume, they most likely are going to scan it, seeking out a reason to dig deeper into its contents.  And since it would be to your benefit if they did so, you want to do everything you can to make sure that you “hook” them quickly.

This is why the presentation of your resume is so important.  It must be constructed in such a way as to grab the eye and hold the attention of the person perusing it—at least until they decide that you’re an interview candidate.

Below are five ways to increase the chances that your resume will get noticed:
#1—Use an appropriate font type.
The best ones to use are Arial, Times New Roman, Garamond, Calibri, and Georgia.  You definitely don’t want to get too cute here.  You just want something professional that’s easy to read.
#2—Use an appropriate font size.
The smallest you should go with font size is 10, but if you can go bigger than that, do so.  You want your resume to be readable, but you also don’t want to sacrifice space and perhaps exclude information that a hiring manager would consider to be important.
#3—Be consistent.
Make sure the headings follow the same style and that the dates are in the same place.  Make it easy for the person’s eye to jump around the page so they can digest important information in a short amount of time.  If you make it difficult, then they’ll simply discard your resume.
#4—Emphasize where necessary (but only where necessary).
Using bolding and italics is okay.  However, using too much bolding and italics is NOT okay.  If everything is important, than nothing is really important, and once again, going overboard will make the resume more difficult to read (or scan).
#5—Utilize white space.
Something else that hampers the readability of your resume is trying to cram too much information onto one piece of paper.  Make the margins wide enough and use a minimum of words to convey what is necessary.  If possible, hire a professional writer or copy editor to help you assemble (and polish) your resume.