If you're applying to every job with the same resume, you're doing it wrong.

Tailor your resume to the job description of the role you are applying to.

"But Eleanor," You say, "Does that mean I have to re-write my resume every time I apply for a job? That sounds stupid, and I don't have time. No one even reads my resume anyways because there are 1000 applicants, and a robot looks it over anyways, and job searching sucks, and life is meaningless and...."

Yes, yes, yes. I hear you. And you are exactly right.

But hear me out. This is something that good candidates do, and it's something you cannot afford to skimp on. This practice is about getting in the door. About having someone take longer than 10 seconds to look at your resume.

Let's take a look at what I'm talking about.

Below are three resumes: An IT Support one (Resume 1), a Recruitment one (Resume 2), and a Generic one for Product, IT, Recruitment, and Buisness Analysis.

The first one is for IT. This is the front page of a "Skills Based Resume" template. In the page after, I go more into my experience etc.

But if you actually look at my experience itself, you will see that I do not have much IT experience.

What I have done here, is tried to look at an IT support Job Description, and highlight what skills I think they are looking for, and tie it to my previous experience.

Example: IT Support Engineers are required to provide high quality customer service to their colleagues.

They are supposed to design systems and processes to make their colleagues lives easier, and they are supposed to be quick problem solvers and have a high technical aptitude, even if they have never come up against the type of problem before.

Okay, here is resume 2. My recruitment Resume.

The first thing you will notice, is that my skills section highlights completely different skill set.

It's not because I've changed something intrinsic about what I did in my previous position, the fact is that the strengths I will bring to a recruiting role are different from what I would bring to an IT role.

My experience as an Operations Manager allowed me to develop skills in many different aspects of my career, and I will use them differently for an IT role vs a Recruiting role.

Let's look at a third resume: My most generic one. This one is the most similar one I see for less experienced students or recent grads, who have not yet decided what they want to do.

In my headline, it says I am looking to start my career in Biz-Dev, IT support, HR, or Product.

Which as we saw above, is totally legit! Maybe I would be great at all of those things!

But here is the difference. If as a recruiter, I'm looking for an IT support Engineer, and someone gave me Resume 1, and someone else gave me Resume 3, I would 100% pick resume 1 and reject resume 3.

This because the recruiters job is just 1 thing: present a pool of candidates to a Hiring Manager, where there is concrete evidence on their resume that they could be good at the job they applied to.

With Resume 3, this candidate is making a recruiter jump through hoops, and use a lot of creative brainpower to make the case as to how an Operations Manager might be good at IT.

Resume 1 does all that work for the recruiter. "Oh this person has experience creating technical systems. Oh, this person has experience helping train employees on how to use software. Okay, this person is pursuing certifications in IT. Maybe they will be good at this job".

Vs Resume 3: Where the thought is "wow this is unique background, but it seems like this candidate is not entirely tied to an IT support job. Why are they applying to this? Is it just a backup while they look for Product jobs? Will they like IT enough to deal with annoying coworkers who need help every day turning their computer on and off?".

And here is the thing. With 100 other resumes in the pile, recrutiers are not equipped to jump through hoops. Because there are probably 15 resumes AT LEAST that are tailored to the job, and

1. make a compelling case that they want the job
2. have some evidence as to how they will solve our problems
3. won't make a recruiter look dumb when they bring an unrelated candidate to a hiring manager

Look, I know this is a hard pill to swallow. Resumes are hard enough, and trying to make a new one for every single job you apply to is exhausting.

I hope this helps explain some of the philosophy behind tailoring a resume, and can help you on your way to becoming an IT support engineer or a product manager or a recruiter, with tailored resumes for each.

My next article will be some practical tips on how to tailor your resume, so stay tuned, and please ask any questions in the comments, as I'm happy to help!