Resume Design: Creating the Right Resume for the Right Job

Whether you're a new college grad with little or no experience or a seasoned veteran with years under your belt, you might reach a time in your career when you need to specifically create a resume for the job you want.

Maybe you want to try something new. Or perhaps you've gained a lot of experience in a variety of areas and now you would like to focus on one specific area. Maybe you've just graduated with a degree in a field you enjoyed studying, but really don't want to turn it into a career. How can you adapt your resume to show you have the educational background and work experience that is ideally suited to the position you want?

Here are five tips on what you can do.

Identify the hard skills required for the position.

When you review a job posting, you should carefully note exactly what skills the company is seeking. Consider this job ad:

All it takes is your four-year degree and one year general office experience to jump-start a career as a Claims Evaluator. Ideal candidates will be highly self-directed with strong multi-tasking, communication and organization skills and the ability to build superior relationships with both internal and external customers. Must be an innovative problem solve and computer literate.

What immediately gets your attention? It should be that you need a college degree along with a year of office experience and computer skills. These are the hard skills required for this position. Hard skills are learned skills and include abilities you have gained through education, training, and on the job experience.

Identify the soft skills required for the position.

In most instances an employer's job posting will not only include education, training and experience required, but also soft skills. Soft skills or personal traits include things like interpersonal, communication, collaboration, problem-solving and project management skills. Generally these are more intrinsic in nature and have evolved through school and work experiences rather than being directly taught. Whether or not a candidate possesses these soft skills can really only be determined in a face-to-face interview. However, you should be aware of what they want and how you match up.

Determine how all your qualifications match the job posted.

The next step is look at your background and experience to determine which hard and soft skills you bring to the table.

At a minimum you should have the hard skills requested when you apply for a position. That is, you should have the education, training and experience as stated in the job posting. Then make sure your resume adequately communicates this information.

If, however, you are short on some of the background requested, you can still create a resume that communicates your potential.

Develop your resume to reflect the matches and downplay the misses.

Let's look at the three hard skills required in this advertisement:

· Four-year degree

If you have a college degree in a major that you feel may detract from your chances of getting an interview because it is not applicable to the position, leave off the major. General topics like history, English, and psychology are fine. However, if you majored in recreation science and you are applying for an office position, employers may question your motivation. Indicate that you have a degree and where it's from and leave it at that. Additionally, if you plan on completing your degree within the next few months, be sure to include anticipated graduation date.

· Computer literacy

As for technical capabilities, be sure you have these. It makes no sense to try and fudge your way into a position if you are clearly not capable of working on spreadsheets, databases or other specifically requested skills.

· One year office experience

There is nothing you can do if you are short on the required amount of experience, although if the ad requests five years and you only have two, you may want to rethink whether or not to apply. However, if you are not short by much, you may want to consider using a skills-based (or functional) resume to highlight your skills and abilities and downplay the actual amount of experience.

Use a skills-based or functional resume versus a chronological resume.

A functional resume groups all your experience according to your top skill sets. Typically you should select three to five skills to highlight. So if you were to choose communication, project management and relationship building as your three skills, you would then list your related experience under each skill. Your actual work history, which would follow this skills section, would then only list company name, dates of employment and job title.

The purpose of this design is to highlight your transferable skills and downplay less related job titles, non-related experience, and length of experience. This type of resume is also helpful if you have many years of similar experience (which may then result in repeating the same information over and over) or if you have had a lot of jobs in a short period of time.

The whole idea is to design your resume so it reflects what the employer is seeking in a candidate. If you have the necessary skills and the desire to learn, the biggest hurdle will be getting the employer to take a look at what you have to offer. Creating the right resume for the right job will move you one step closer to your goal.