20 Ways To Make Your Resume Stand Out

Nikki Paterson Author

Unlock the secrets to crafting a standout resume to captivate recruiters and land you on the top of the 'must interview' pile.

I was recently on a recruitment panel for a job that had a large number of applicants.

This means that I had a large number of applications to read. I'm talking about an A4 paper box full of applications (that I carted around like a toddler on my hip over the few days it took to do the shortlisting).

As a professional resume writer, I know what makes a good resume. Still, the experience of being on the other side of the table again, reading and grading resumes, was an excellent reminder of what makes a good resume stand out from the competition.

To be completely honest, although every panel member reads every single application, they do start to blur into each other after a while – except for the standout resumes.

So here are 20 ways to make your resume stand out, wow the panel and land on the top of the ‘must interview’ pile.

1. Don’t make my eyes hurt. 

When you write in size 8 font with one-centimetre margins, it literally makes my eyes hurt to read your resume, which is counter-productive.

Give the panel plenty of white space. Space to make notes in the margins and space to underline and circle things without writing over your following line.

12 font is preferable, but 11 font is doable, and a minimum margin of 2 centimetres, more is possible, is ideal.

2. Use the corporate colours of the organisation you’re applying for. 

You can use these in your header, footer and headings throughout.

Doing this helps to assimilate you with the organisation in the minds of your prospective employer.

3.  Hook the panel in. 

Use a succinct career profile or opening statement. This is the first paragraph of your resume and should explain why you are the best candidate for the role and the value that you bring to the employer.

Remember, this should be incredibly relevant to the role you’re applying for. It should capture the reader’s attention and hook them into wanting to read the rest of the document.

4. Keep them hooked. 

When listing your experience, skills and achievements within your previous roles, make sure every single thing in there is relevant to the role you’re applying for.

As soon as you put irrelevant information in here, you not only dilute your message, but you run the risk of losing the attention of your reader. And once you’ve lost your reader’s attention, it’s incredibly difficult to get it back.

5. Order your information from most important and relevant to least important and relevant. 

Yes, this is like choosing your favourite child.

When listing your experience, achievements and skills underneath each role that you’ve held, it's essential to list your most relevant experience first and then work backwards.

Relevance is the key to holding your reader’s attention.

6. Articulate the value. 

Rather than just tell me what you did, tell me the outcome, impact and contribution of your actions.

An easy hack to achieve this is to go through each dot point in your resume and ask yourself, ‘So what?’

You implemented a new system improvement. So what? What value did this bring? Articulate it. Did your system innovation increase revenue, or maybe it decreased expenses or increased productivity?

Don’t just state what you did, but try to articulate the value in this because this is the value that you can bring to your prospective employer.

Your prospective employer may not need a new system implemented, but I’m sure they’d be interested in your innovative thinking that leads to an increase in revenue.

7. Quantify your results where possible.

After you've articulated the value of your actions, quantify it, where you can.  Numbers speak. They represent outcomes quickly and clearly in concrete terms, and they can make a significant impact.

Simply saying that you increased revenue can be ambiguous – a $1 increase in revenue is still an increase. In contrast, a 12% increase in revenue is verifiable and has a more significant impact.

Make your achievements clear with numbers where you can.

8. Qualify your experience where you can. 

Along the same lines, consider qualifying your experience. Demonstrated experience is great, but experience backed by qualifications has a greater impact in your resume.

Experience coupled with qualifications is a resume gold; demonstrated experience shows that you can do the work and achieve results, and a supporting qualification shows that you have the skillset, knowledge and understanding that underpins this.

One of the challenges that some people face is having loads of relevant experience and skills but no qualifications to formalise that experience. If this is you, it might be worth considering Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) to clearly and formally demonstrate your capabilities within your resume.

Churchill Education are RPL experts who explain that RPL is the process of turning your skills, knowledge and experience into nationally recognised qualifications. It’s the opportunity to be awarded qualifications through demonstrated workplace examples, as opposed to studying for what you already know.

As a professional resume writer with a lot of experience in the education and training sector, I get on my soapbox about RPL because it's a great win.

It’s an excellent way to turn hard-earned and real-life experience and skills into a qualification that can demonstrate competence in a resume. And in some instances, a particular qualification is either a pre-request for the role or is often ‘considered favourably’.

9. Only list your relevant qualifications. 

While we’re talking about qualifications, nothing dilutes your truly relevant (and hard-earned) qualifications, like burying them in a graveyard of every qualification you’ve ever attained (including your high school certificate).

Do not list every qualification you hold; only those that are relevant to the role and demonstrate you have the qualifications and capability to perform the role.

It can be challenging for some people to cull irrelevant qualifications, and I get it; you’ve worked hard to attain that qualification, but if it's not directly relevant to the role, you run the risk of 'diluting' the importance of the relevant qualifications.

10. Use action language. 

It’s a personal peeve of mine when people use passive, tasked or collective language in a resume. You absolutely short-change yourself when you use phrases like “Responsible for…" "Tasked to…". "Part of a team that…”

Just because you were responsible for something doesn't mean you actually did it. We've all worked with colleagues who have been responsible for things they never did, but I bet their resumes say they were responsible for doing it. Don’t tell me you were responsible for it; use active language and tell me what you did.

Telling me that you were tasked to do something doesn’t show me your initiative, your proactive work style or your innovation; it just means you’re good at doing what you’re told to do.

Collective language, where you refer to ‘the team’ and tell me what ‘we’ achieved, doesn’t take ownership of your part in the process and doesn’t make it clear what you actually did.

Cull your passive, tasked and collective language and replace it with active language that demonstrates ownership, initiative and innovation.

11. Speak the language. 

Use keywords from the position description throughout your resume. Don't keyword stuff, but use the same language that's used within the position description. This makes it easy for the panel to see your alignment with the role.

12. Know what they’re looking for and hit it. 

This goes beyond the key accountabilities of the role and includes the culture, values, vision and mission of the organisation.

I’ve seen the same role advertised in two very different organisations, wanting very different things. Even though the key accountabilities of the role were very similar, one organisation was focused on communication, teamwork and a culture of inclusivity. In contrast, the other organisation was focused on achieving results and meeting KPIs.

Recruitment is expensive. Employers don’t want to hire just anyone who can do the job; they want to hire the right person who can not only do the job but fit in with the organisation and sing from the same songsheet.

Make sure your resume reflects your alignment with the organisation.

13. Be concise. 

If you can say it in a paragraph, you can probably say it in a sentence. Write like a boxer – lots of jabs and hooks, no flowery, languishing prose. Get to the point. This is also a great way to demonstrate your excellent communication skills, which is usually an essential requirement for most roles.

It's essential to be concise; If a panel member has to re-read a long and convoluted sentence to try and understand it, you’ve broken their flow and concentration and probably lost their attention.

14. Keep your resume as short as possible. 

Along similar lines to being concise, keep your entire resume as short as you can.

Three to four pages is a good guideline, but it's only a guideline. If you only have enough relevant information to fill two pages, then go with two pages. If you absolutely need five pages and you’re not waffling or filling your resume with irrelevant info, then use five pages.

15. Kill your darlings. 

It sounds gruesome, I know. This brutal writing reference was attributed to William Faulkner, meaning that writers must ruthlessly eliminate characters, words, and side plots that they love but that don’t contribute to the story.

This couldn’t be more true of resume writing. When we represent ourselves (and often our perceived worth) on paper, especially our hard-won achievements, we usually want to add everything. We become very (understandably) attached to our achievements, skills and qualifications. We worked hard, and there’s often been some sweat and tears somewhere in there, and we want to see that ‘thing’ represented on paper. But…

The key to a relevant and concise resume is to go through every dot point, qualification, skill and achievement listed on your resume – every sentence – and relate it to a point in the position description. If you can't do that, it's not relevant, and you need to kill it off.

16. Use transferable titles if you need to. 

Some job roles and even some training have obscure titles where the meaning is not easily understood.

There’s no point putting something on your resume that the panel doesn’t understand.

Translate that job title or qualification title into something that truly represents what it is and that anyone reading can understand. You can always put the actual title in brackets afterwards if you want for transparency.

17. Proofread. 

It’s a no-brainer, but just about every resume I read has a typo, missing word, or general boo-boo. Check your spelling and grammar (especially if you have 'excellent attention to detail’ written anywhere in your resume). Grammarly is your friend here.

18. Make page one of your resume your cover letter. 

Some job advertisements will ask for a cover letter, but if they don’t, it’s still a good idea to attach one.

Your cover letter is your opportunity to introduce yourself, explain your motivation for the role and broadly explain what you can bring to the role and why you are the best candidate for the role.

19. Add a hyperlink to your LinkedIn profile. 

If you have an up-to-date LinkedIn profile, add a hyperlink to it in your header. This is a way to give your prospective employer or recruiter direct access to additional information about you.

This strategy also helps to keep your resume short, relevant and concise, knowing that your prospective employer has access to additional information about you.

20. Get perspective if you need it. 

If you need help seeing the trees for the forest when you’re writing your resume, if you're not sure what to put in and what to leave out, or if you're having difficulty clearly articulating your value, an external view might help.

Working with a professional resume writer can provide an objective perspective. It can help identify and articulate the relevant skills, experience, and qualifications to highlight, that are relevant to a particular role or industry.

If you need support to craft a winning resume, check out my professional writing services here, where we can work together to get your resume on the top of the ‘must interview pile’.