Keywords

• To scan through resumes quickly, companies will electronically search for keywords. Read a job description closely, and figure out which traits and skills the company is most looking for in a candidate. Include these traits and skills in your resume, written in the same format as on the company's job description.
  
  Example: If the company says it is looking for someone skilled in multi-tasking and handling deadlines in a stressful environment, add to your resume skills "multi-tasking" and "handling deadlines", and then include examples in a cover letter.
  
  

Benefits for Company

• In the resume, you don't want to just list the job duties you did. If someone else who held your position could name the same job duties, it isn't good enough. Make it personal. Sell yourself. Explain how you helped the company, or how you dealt with a tough situation and came out on top. Show the company it will benefit by hiring you.
  
  Example: Instead of writing, "I served food to tables at a restaurant," write, "I increased sales by 20% at a restaurant and became a certified trainer in only two months."
  
  

Format

• Reading resumes on the computer is often hard on the eyes, especially for a hiring manager who reads more than 100 resume per day. Format your resume to appear organized and open. When you look at the page, there should be lots of white still visible. Use bullet point sentences to describe your job duties, use symbols that will pop out, such as $ and %, use action verbs that will keep your sentences short and to the point, make the font size no smaller than 12 and keep the resume to one or two pages.
  
  Example: *Created 12 monthly newsletters
  *Wrote and edited press releases and web content
  * Increased blog subscribers by 10% each month
  
  

Grammar & Spelling

• One perk of having an online resume is that you can use a tool to easily do a spell-check. Spell-checking is fairly simple, as long as you watch out for words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly, but grammar is trickier, because grammar mistakes often don't show up on spell checks. Have family members or friends read over the resume, or send it to an electronic resume reader, such as resume-help.org.