Key Points for Building a Resume in 2024

Whether you are a new job seeker or someone with years of work experience, a strong resume can be your best professional resource.

A resume reflects your education, work experience, specialized certifications, achievements, and unique skills. But what are the key points for building a resume that stands out in 2024 and for the remainder of your career?

What to Include in a Resume

Items to include when building a resume have changed over the years, just as the education and skills needed in certain job fields have changed.

Indeed’s Career Guide offers the following tips for building your resume:

• Keep the resume short (one page or at most two pages) and simple.
• Keep in mind that most employers prefer the chronological resume format with your most recent or current work experience listed first.
• Only include the past 10-15 years of your work experience.
• Be sure to include your education as well as extracurricular and volunteer activities only as they relate to the job opportunity.
• Use a professional and easy-to-read type font such as Arial or Times New Roman.
• Use “power verbs” in your resume such as accomplished, earned, or achieved.
• Be sure to proofread your resume.
• Have several versions of your resume available for different types of job opportunities.

Just as there are critical components to include when building a resume, there are also items that you should not include such as your home address, high school education, references, or your photo.

Be Aware of How Employers Review Resumes

Many companies currently use software called an applicant tracking system (ATS)—a type of AI-enabled (artificial intelligence) tool—to scan resumes received from applicants for keywords and phrases as they relate to a specific job position. You want to make sure that your resume is optimized for ATS so that the application makes its way beyond the scanner to the human resources department for review.

One way to discern the keywords for a job opportunity is to look at the job description and the specific requirements mentioned at the top of the job description and duties. Online tools such as Jobscan, Resume Worded’s Targeted Resume, or SkillSyncer can help you find what keywords to include when building a resume.

Resume Trends for 2024 and Beyond

According to an article by Amanda Augustine, a certified professional career coach (CPCC), there are three important resume trends for 2024 and beyond, including highlighting your soft skills, concentrating on the specific outcomes of your work experiences, and optimizing your resume for AI. Awareness of these trends can help make your resume stand out in a competitive job-seeking environment.

Highlight Soft Skills When Building a Resume

In addition to your technical skills and abilities, soft skills can be incorporated into your resume as well. Employers look for examples of an applicant’s soft skills such as flexibility, conflict resolution, effective communication, and adaptability to change, among others. Amanda Augustine suggests to decide which soft skills to spotlight by looking at your favorite job postings and then “incorporate these skills into your resume by weaving them into your professional summary, listing them in your skills section, and illustrating them at work via the work achievements in your professional experience section.”

Concentrate on the Outcomes of Your Work Experience

Be specific in how you leveraged your skills in work experiences, not general. For example, instead of writing only, “Coordinated a breast cancer screening project for underserved women,” you can also state the outcome. To add more detail, you can write, “Obtained a $100,000 grant through partnerships with healthcare organizations and coordinated a breast cancer screening project involving 300 underserved female participants with 27 early-stage breast cancers detected through mammography and ultrasound.”

Optimize Your Resume for AI

You should not only optimize your resume using keywords for applicant tracking software but also for the use of other AI since more employers are using AI in the recruiting process to screen job candidates. Amanda Augstine notes, “one study found that 83% of U.S. companies already use some form of AI technology in human resources, including recruitment, while another study stated that 65% of recruiters already use AI technology as part of their talent acquisition process.”

Another report by Mercer noted that 95% of recruiters in companies believe that AI could be beneficial for the application process, and of those companies, 41% already use AI chatbots to engage with candidates during recruitment. Indeed offers insightful tips on optimizing your resume for AI and the chatbots used.

Build Your Best Resume

When building a resume to stand out from the crowd in 2024 and beyond, you need to consider all the factors that impact the recruiting process. LinkedIn suggests adding a professional summary at the top of your resume. Grab the recruiter’s attention with an interesting headline to your professional summary and along with the above key points mentioned, you can structure a resume for success!

 

Written by Jo Gambosi

Disclaimer: Blackstone Career Institute, an accredited school, cannot guarantee employment, job promotion prospects, or income increases.