5 Tips to Improve Your Resume

You’ve put in the work to have some incredible things on your resume. Whether it be an internship, job, volunteering, or something else amazing, you deserve to get credit for the awesome things you’ve done. But, when it comes to actually writing your resume, you need to be sure you’re using the right words to convey the significance of your accomplishments. I’ve been lucky to have a lot of intelligent people give me resume advice over the years, so it only feels right to pass on what I’ve learned. Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing your resume to ensure it’s the best it can be. 

1. Keep it concise. The people reading your resume, just like all of us, have short attention spans. You don’t want your main points to get lost inside of long, wordy sentences. Be sure to explicitly state your accomplishments in as few words as possible. If possible, it’s best to have your resume only be one page long— any longer, people stop paying attention.
2. List experiences in order from most to least recent. Your resume is meant to be a timeline of your experiences, so it will be most effective if you list them in chronological order, with your most recent experience first. This will make it easier for the resume reader to see a more clear picture of the things you’ve done. 
3. Use action verbs. Using strong action verbs helps to effectively convey the work you did. Start every bullet point listed below your experiences with an action verb that reflects your role. Don’t repeat verbs— if you get stuck, Google “strong action verbs” and search around for inspiration. Here is a helpful resource for action verbs for your resume. 
4. Provide quantifiable results. When listing the results of your work, try to include numerical values. This will give those reading your resume a better grasp on the direct effect you had. Quantifiable results can be anything from increasing website traffic by a certain percentage to generating a certain amount of profit. Even 100% completion rate or 0% error rate counts as quantifiable. Here is a useful resource for quantifying your results. 
5. Be descriptive as possible. Start by answering who, what, where, when, why, and how (if applicable) to provide depth to your experiences. Then, you can add in your quantifiable data and provide any other essential information. Be sure to identify who benefited from your work as well.