In This Episode
- Don't send the same resume to every job. Tailor it instead, which doesn't mean rewriting the whole thing each time.
- Read the job description closely. Phrases, skills, software and methodologies that repeat are clues to what belongs on your resume.
- Four quick places to tailor: your title at the top, the about me, the company summaries, and your bullet points. You don't need to change all four every time.
- Skip keyword stuffing, including hidden white text. Sarah says applicant tracking systems can see it and a recruiter who spots it won't be impressed.
Episode Summary
To tailor your UX resume for every job, read the job description, spot the skills, software and methodologies it repeats, and adjust a few parts of your resume to match. I know many of you hear “tailor your resume” on LinkedIn and think it means starting from scratch each time, but it doesn’t.
Your resume is a list of receipts showing you’ve done what the job description asks for, and it should be easy to read. I like to point to Craigslist here. It won’t win design awards, but it works because it’s plain and gives people the information they need quickly. If you’ve been tempted to keep redesigning your resume, that’s worth remembering, and why you’re stuck redesigning your UX resume goes deeper on it.
There are four things you can change quickly. First, the title at the top, so it aligns with the role you’re applying to. Second, your about me, which should give a strong snapshot in case it’s all someone reads. Third, the company summary under each job, which gives context on the company and what you worked on. Fourth, your bullet points: reorder them, remove ones that don’t fit, or add software names the job description mentions. This isn’t a five hour task, and some days you may only do one or two of these.
Please don’t keyword stuff. Some people hide keywords in white font, but the applicant tracking system can see them, and some systems may flag a term repeated a hundred times. If you want more on how these systems work, see how to optimize your resume for the ATS. A recruiter who notices it won’t be impressed either.
This episode is a segment of a longer episode. Listen to the full conversation here.
Frequently Asked Questions
01How do I tailor my UX resume to a job description?
02What parts of my resume should I change for each job?
03Should I put keywords in white text on my resume?
Show Notes & Links
Episode Transcript
Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: The resume is about showing people that you have the experience on the job description and making it easy for them to read. And not all design is always quote, beautiful. Like if you think of Craigslist, is Craigslist going to win like awards? Probably not. But why does Craigslist work? Because it’s ugly and boring, and it lets people get the information they need in a very timely fashion. So keep Craigslist in mind when you’re working on your resumes.
Sarah Doody [00:00:32]: Don’t use the same resume for every job you apply to. Now I know you’ve probably seen on LinkedIn, people say you have to tailor your resume for each role you apply to. And a lot of people say, well, that’s creating too much work. I don’t have that kind of time, etc. I’m not saying let’s make a brand new resume, rewrite the whole thing for every single job. The key word here is tailor. We want to tailor the resume for every role. Now, this requires that you read the job description. And I know many of you don’t read the job description. But here’s the thing, the job descriptions provide clues as to exactly what your resume should include, such as specific phrases, skills, software, methodologies, etc. And so when you take time to actually read the job description, you’re able to identify maybe software that is mentioned a couple of times, or areas of expertise that are mentioned a couple of times. And when you start to see those things repeated in the job description, or blatantly put out in like, you must do x, y, z, you want to have that on your resume, because your resume is kind of like a list of receipts that show that you have done what is on the job description. Now, what exactly can you tailor on your resume? Let’s take a look. This is a cropped resume, right? It’s more than one page. And we’re just looking at the first little bit for things you could tailor, right? You could tailor what goes up here. In this case, this is for a senior UX researcher. But maybe depending on the job you’re applying to, you tweak that. Now, of course, if the job description says like, UX researcher to because at the company you’re applying to, they have like, numerical levels of researchers, I wouldn’t recommend you literally put UX researcher to, but use your own judgment there to try and make that title very, very much aligned with what you’re applying to.
Sarah Doody [00:02:51]: Next thing, the about me. Every resume should have a little about me. Rationale here is that if they only read this and nothing else on your resume, you want that to provide an excellent snapshot of your experience, to draw them in and make them want to read the rest of your resume. So you might tweak that about me. Maybe if you’re applying to a company in healthcare, you make sure it says healthcare in that about me. And maybe you ditch other industries you’ve worked in, in this case, travel and finance, to put more emphasis on the fact that you have seven years of experience in healthcare, maybe two other things you can tailor on your resume here. Company summary, every single part of your job history should have a company summary, because this is an opportunity to number one, tell people what the company was about, because chances are there’s probably companies on your resume that the person looking at your resume has not heard of. But even if you have worked at a household company like Google, Microsoft, Home Depot, Delta Airlines, whatever, this company summary is a great place to provide context around the exact things you worked on, whether it’s part of the product, the size of the team, whether it was like a remote team, or whatever. That’s the third thing.
Sarah Doody [00:04:14]: And then the fourth is the literal bullet points, you could even just reorder the bullet points. So like if this bullet point is very much aligned with what is in the job description, move it up to the first bullet point, right? You might end up removing some bullet points, because you’re like, this is great experience, but it’s not totally aligned with stuff mentioned in the job description. And you also might end up, you know, tweaking some of the bullets, maybe you add in like names of software that’s mentioned in the job description. So those are four ways that you can tailor your resume to the job description. And those four changes are going to be pretty quick. This is not like a five hour activity to change your resume for every job you apply to like we’re doing this quick. And you don’t have to do all four of these every single time. Maybe you’re just doing one or two. But don’t skip this step.
Sarah Doody [00:05:14]: Don’t keyword stuff your resume. Yes, people do this. And let me show you, people will often put keywords hidden on their resume in a white font to try and hide them. But the applicant tracking system can see those. And some of the applicant tracking systems can detect, like if the word user research is on your resume 100 times, there’s a possibility that it might be like, wait a sec, this person’s like cheating, essentially, not really, but you know what I mean. So don’t do that. It just it’s like a it just makes you look bad. And if a recruiter sees that they’re not they’re not going to be too impressed with that either.
Sarah Doody [00:05:58]: And we are going to tailor our resumes to the roles we apply to. I hope you guys have some actionable stuff to do on your resume today. Have a great, great rest of your day. Bye everyone.
