25 Resume Tips To Land Your Dream Job In 2025

This list of resume tips for 2025 has carefully curated the best practices and insights that have helped my clients land interviews in a matter of days and job offers in less than 60 days (even as few as two weeks!) after updating, revamping, or newly crafting their resumes.

Let me start by asking you, what’s keeping you from updating your resume?

I hear this scenario far too often from job seekers.

You dread going to work every morning. You do it because you need to pay the bills and chip away at that looming debt you’re reminded of with every monthly statement.

You get an email or text from an old friend, former co-worker, or industry connection that you made years ago about a job opening with a company you’ve been discreetly stalking online for weeks. All you need to do is send over your resume or apply online tonight, and the job is practically yours.

It only takes one look at your resume, and you feel defeated. You haven’t touched it in years. It doesn’t even have your most recent job listed, and its overall look and feel hasn’t changed much over time. You’re pretty sure it looks as ineffective as you feel after a long day at work.

Then there’s all this talk online about ATS, AI, bots, and algorithms that will “kick you out” if you don’t know how to beat the system. Let me reassure you right now, this doesn’t actually happen.

Resume writing is often the most dreaded task for job seekers because either:

• You have a difficult time talking about yourself in a resume,
• You have a hard time quantifying skill sets, and your edu-crastination (You like that?) has only instilled in you that quantifying your skills is the only way to get an interview,
• You have no idea what to do with your overly diversified experience or work history timeline issues like multiple company acquisitions, demotions, or changing job titles;
• The “dark cloud” of hiring technologies is hanging over you, or
• You’re just too exhausted to work on your resume after work.

Here are 24 actionable steps you can take to write a resume that lands more interviews and, ultimately, job offers this year.

1 | Understand Your Resume’s Role In The Hiring Process

The #1 complaint from job seekers in the last five years has been, “My resume isn’t getting in front of the right people!” I get how frustrating, time-consuming, and often discouraging looking and applying for jobs online can be. Understanding your resume’s role in the hiring process is the first step to creating a job-winning resume that gets you unstuck and moving forward confidently.

Granted this can vary depending on company size and industry, here’s the SparkNotes version of the typical hiring process:

• A team leader or manager realizes they need to create or fill a position and notifies the HR team.
• Someone on that HR team creates a job description based on the team leader/manager’s needs and posts it to the company’s Applicant Tracking System (also known as ATS) which is linked to the company’s Careers page.
• The HR staff member then posts the job to job boards as well as LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, and other sites depending on their budget.
• The Applicant Tracking software collects resumes and applications from hundreds of job seekers, narrowing down applicants to the most qualified candidates using search terms and “knock-out” questions from the applications.
• The top qualified candidates (maybe the top 10) will have their resumes looked at by the recruiter or HR team who will have their own checklist of requirements and preferences.
• Out of the resumes seen, the top candidates (maybe the top 6) will get phone screening interviews.
• Out of the candidates screened, the top candidates (maybe the top 4) will have their resumes forwarded to that team leader or hiring manager to be considered for an in-person interview.
• Out of the interviewed candidates, the top candidate (maybe more depending on the hiring circumstances) will get the job offer.

2 | Write For All Readers, Not Just Bots

Now that you understand your resume’s role in the hiring process, you can see that your resume needs to get through an Applicant Tracking System and two other gateways before you are selected for a job interview. A common misconception about resume writing is that your top priority has to be writing your resume for computers or the bots that operate within ATS.

Resume writing is actually a balancing act. You have to write your resume for three different audiences: ATS, a recruiter or HR, and a hiring manager or direct supervisor deciding who will get the interview.

ATS is looking at both the digital formatting of your resume and the keywords you’ve included throughout. The HR reader likely has a checklist of requirements and preferences that they use as terms to search, sort, or filter through applicants, so you can’t assume this person will know that you have certain skills and experience based on your job titles. A hiring manager or direct supervisor will then need to decide who is the best fit for the job, the team, and the company as a whole among the handful of applicants that made it this far in the process.

3 | Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence

If anything, AI is going to make it easier for you to land interviews.

Most of the AI-driven features being used by hiring professionals are to write better job postings and improve communications with candidates. AI can also be used to help recruiters and hiring professionals find candidates on networks like LinkedIn based on search terms like position titles and skills—where AI branches out from these search terms to find candidates with similar position titles and skills. LinkedIn is also providing AI-driven features for recruiters that will recommend profile matches before jobs are even posted.

Other hiring software, like Applicant Tracking Systems, have similar AI integrations. What’s most exciting is that some ATS have AI capabilities that will help gauge an applicant’s level of experience beyond calculating years of work history listed keyword placement. Instead of just looking at keywords, it’s looking at everything you’re saying in your resume and drawing conclusions about your skills and experience.

If you’re providing enough context throughout your resume to show the results or outcomes an employer can expect from you based on past performance, AI will help drive your resume to the top of applicant lists.

4 | Narrow Down Your Job Target?

The most effective, job-winning resume is going to be targeted for a specific job. If you’re applying for jobs online, this means the specific job posting. If you’re networking, this means you need to get laser-focused on what your ideal role is to position yourself as the best fit for the job that you want.

Targeting your resume shows that you understand the goals of the role you’re applying for or pursuing in your job search. A targeted resume will also demonstrate that you can meet and exceed those goals based on your track record over the course of your work history and educational background.

If you can’t narrow down your job target, you should either create a targeted resume for each of your job targets or consider working with a career coach. Career Exploration & Transition Coaching is highly recommended if you need help getting a clear direction and focus for your job search!

5 | Design Your Resume For ATS

The next step is designing your resume for Applicant Tracking Systems. This software has been around since the 90s—so there’s a ton of outdated information online about it—but ATS has evolved dramatically over the last 5-10 years. Here’s what you need to know:

• Applicant Tracking Systems can’t read text placed in headers or footers, so be careful where you place your contact information in MS Word Documents.
• Applicant Tracking Systems can’t read text placed in text boxes, so avoid using these to organize information on your resume.
• Applicant Tracking Systems scan the text from left to right and often don’t read and store information formatted in columns correctly.
• Applicant Tracking Systems don’t care about bold, underlined, italicized, colored, or color-filled text so you can use these design elements strategically to make your resume easier to skim.
• Applicant Tracking Systems don’t see photos, graphs, or charts embedded in your resume (JPG or PNG files)—just don’t rely on them to convey important information that isn’t in the text.
• Applicant Tracking Systems can read PDFs but are known to read MS Word Documents more accurately—heavily formatted and graphically designed PDF resumes specifically often can’t be previewed in ATS.

To maximize your chances of getting through ATS, start with a new Microsoft Word Document and organize your information in a one-column layout. Make sure your contact information can be found in the body of your resume rather than in the header or footer.

Keep in mind that Applicant Tracking software is designed to look for certain keywords and text arrangements to fill in a form with your information within the software. Use standard section headings (Skills or Areas of Expertise, Experience, Education, Certifications, etc.) to make sure your information is parsed and organized in this software’s searchable database correctly.

Related Article: ATS Explained: How Resume Screening Software Works

6 | Use Color Strategically (& Conservatively)

If your resume looks like every other black-and-white resume from the 90s, you’re not helping yourself at all. Your resume isn’t just a list of your work history and skills—it’s a marketing document, and color psychology is a key branding tactic used in marketing. Your personal brand, or how you want to present yourself to employers using both visual cues and messaging, is directly linked to your personality. Would you want to hire a black-and-white personality?

Use color strategically to impact an employer’s perspective of you. Keep your resume looking professional by using conservative color for your name, section headings, and other design elements sparingly. Pick no more than two colors, but keep the rest of your text easy to read with a standard black font.

Is the thought of getting creative with your resume design giving you anxiety? I’ve already done the heavy lifting for you and designed modern resume templates for college students and recent graduates, those making major career changes, mid-career professionals, and IT professionals in a variety of color schemes.

7 | Include Your LinkedIn Profile Link

If you’re not on LinkedIn, you're already falling behind other applicants. Why? Your LinkedIn profile is often the first stop during a background check because it’s an easy and free way for HR teams to validate your work history. I won’t even get into how LinkedIn recommendations on your profile are the new letters of recommendation…

Related Article: How To Get Raving LinkedIn Recommendations

A LinkedIn profile also enables you to humanize your job application when it’s less professional on a resume such as non-career-related volunteer experience, side projects, and work-life balance activities. It’s your profile on a networking platform, so it should be more approachable and conversational. An even more important advantage is this: You can add more information to your LinkedIn profile than a targeted 1-2 page resume will permit.

Add your LinkedIn profile link to your contact information on your resume and indicate at the end of your resume that more information can be found on your profile to speed up the background check and boost your application.

8 | Remove Dates Older Than 2010

Can you believe that 2010 was 14 years ago?! Unless you’re applying for a job that specifically wants 15+ years of experience with a particular skill (which is becoming less common for many executive-level roles), listing dates on your resume prior to 2010 is only going to age you… and not in a good way.

Age bias and discrimination are serious issues that impact job seekers over 45 more often than they realize, but there are other negative responses to drawing attention to your age on your resume. For example, your extended years of experience may be threatening to a potential younger manager. The extended years of experience may also imply that you’re only looking to bridge an employment gap until a better-fitting job opportunity presents itself.

The extended years can give the impression that you’re fixated on outdated methodologies, best practices, and technologies rather than present you as a forward-thinking professional.

I often work with seasoned job seekers in their 50s and 60s looking for their last job before retirement, drastically changing careers, or returning to work after an early retirement. Eliminating half of their careers from their resumes can be terrifying at first but so rewarding in a matter of weeks. Removing work history prior to 2010 can bring focus to your resume and show employers that you’re more interested in the future than your past.

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