Resume editing is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. My main advice is to focus on the foundations of the iceberg.
Of course, I understand that a poorly formatted, grammatically incorrect, or otherwise sloppy resume could terminate your job opportunities. Nonetheless, I can usually edit resumes in less than an hour to ensure a top notch presentation of the content provided.
But, I cannot change the content by magically providing skills or experiences that will make your resume stronger. And, unless you tell me the specific field of interest, I cannot edit for “fit” either.
So, how should you “edit your resume” in this context?
The primary way is to build your skills and experiences to make you more marketable.
The secondary way – and why I’m often contacted for resume help – is editing your resume to illustrate that you are a fit for the specific field of interest.
For example, a bright young lady from Essex, Connecticut came in for career counseling session. She hoped that I would transform her resume so that she would have more job seeking success.
She had already edited her resume multiple times. I provided several suggestions to make the language a bit more effective. But, that was all I could do at the moment.
To really help her, I needed to know her field of interest. She had been applying randomly to any job with an opening and not adjusting her resume for fit.
Employers want candidates who fit their industries. They also want candidates with distinct skills and experiences that will help serve their specific companies. Her generic objective: “I want a challenging job that will utilize my skills” was not getting much of a response.
It turned out that the best “editing” of her resume was spending the rest of the meeting deciding which couple of fields she would target. In doing so, we created a resume that would fit each.
More importantly, she knows that she has to further “edit” her resume by building skills in each field. Only then will her resume get her a job.