By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the common resume advice:
“Tailor your resume to each job posting you apply to!”
It’s how you get more interviews. Sorta (go here to understand what I mean).
But I’ve been seeing some information floating around about resume tailoring that could be a little confusing.
Specifically, I’ve been seeing people on LinkedIn post things like “Tailoring your resume for each job posting is a waste of your time and energy! You don’t need to do all that”
Aaaaww snap! Which is it then? What should a job seeker like you do?
I wrote about it briefly in this LinkedIn post, but let’s explore a little more here.
SHOULD YOU TAILOR YOUR RESUME FOR EACH JOB POSTING?
The short answer to this is still “yes” but there’s some nuance involved. Before we get into all that nuance, though, it’s worth it to discuss why it’s important to tailor your resume.
It’s pretty simple, truth be told. You tailor your resume to show you’re qualified and actually should be applying to the posting. Seems obvious, but the truth is a lot of people apply to jobs that they’re either not super qualified for, or not at all qualified for.
Recruiters and hiring managers don’t want to spend a whole lot of time combing through each and every resume–they want to quickly glance at them and be able to determine who’s worth taking a longer look at and who isn’t. Tailoring your resume helps whoever’s reading it understand that at the very least you’re one of the ones that’s worth that deeper look and potentially moving on to the call/interview stage.
The question, though, is do you need to tailor your resume every time you submit an application. I mean, what if your resume is already in pretty good shape?
The answer: yes and no (dang it! Why’s it always “yes and no” or “it depends”?! Why can’t it ever not depend??).
Here’s the thing. You need to determine what industry and type of job you’re generally going to be applying for. Are you applying for Customer Success Manager jobs? Social Media Marketing Strategist jobs? Project Manager jobs?
Many companies and institutions have the same types of jobs, and Customer Success Managers across companies play very similar roles. They kinda do the same things, with maybe a couple differences from company to company.
So if you’re a non-profit recruiter or a higher education resident director, you’re going to need to first take your resume from being a “recruiter” or “resident director” resume to being a “customer success manager” resume.
Similarly, if you’re also applying for project manager jobs, you’re also going to need to make another version of your resume that’s a “project manager” resume. And so on and so forth. The tailoring involved in this step will probably take you a while.
Once you’ve done that, though, things get a little simpler. When you submit your resume for a specific Customer Success Manager job, you should tailor it to fit that specific posting, but this should not take you very long to do. I’m talking minutes.
You’ve already done the heavy lifting of tailoring when you first made your “Customer Success Manager” resume, ensuring that the marketable skills and outcomes you described are relevant and appealing for customer success manager jobs. The tailoring at this step is just making sure you use the words in the specific posting you’re applying for (i.e. if the job posting says “management” instead of “supervision”, you want to make sure you reflect that in your resume), and double check that your resume hits on the key skills/results described in that posting.
There’s some variability between Customer Success Manager jobs from company to company, but probably not very much. So while you should be tailoring your resume to each job you apply for, it should not at all take you very much time to do it…if you’ve done your job of creating the right “base” resume to begin with.
WRAPPING UP
It’s not that tailoring your resume is a waste of time. It’s not. I mean, it can be, but not necessarily. It really just depends on if you’re doing it the right way.
Make sure you have the right “base” resume(s), and go from there. When done well, you can then tailor your resume to each job in a matter of 5-10 minutes.
Y’all got this. And if you have questions, let me know! Send me an email at brandon@begallantcoaching.com and I promise I’ll get back to you.
WEBINAR ANNOUNCEMENT!
Very soon I’ll be hosting a free webinar on an important mindset shift that will make you a stronger candidate. I’m talking more interviews, more offers, better offers. I’ll give you a hint.
If you’re applying for jobs, that makes you an applicant. So I bet you’re also thinking like an applicant. That’s not a good thing. I will send you an invite soon, but if you want to make sure you get it, just drop your name, email, and “invite me!” in the form below and I’ll make sure you get it.
~Brandon
Be Gallant Coaching 