Looking for a new job can take a lot of time, especially if you're already working another job while you search. But doing everything to make a good first impression, especially with your resume, can make all the difference in getting you in the door to interview.
It doesn't have to take a ton of time, either, says Marissa Morrison, vice president of people at the job search site ZipRecruiter. If you have just 5 minutes to update your resume, the one thing you should do is "go through every bullet point and quantify wherever you can," she tells CNBC Make It.
For example, get specific if you grew sales by X%, managed a budget of $X, or hired and trained X number of people to your team.
Like many hiring experts, she sees the value in leveraging artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to get this done, too.
Using AI tools can be "incredibly helpful" to help you quantify some of your accomplishments, she says. For example, you might write a prompt in ChatGPT to "write resume bullet points for [insert job title here] and include metric-based achievements."
Make sure your responsibilities and accomplishments also mirror what's in the job description. And yes, that often means having slightly different resumes for each role you apply to.
She considers tailoring your resume a "tried and true" piece of job-search advice, and just a few minutes of work "can really help you stand out and ensure that there's no question that you've got the background or experience to take on a new role."
If you have a little more time, you can go through your resume and prompt ChatGPT to review it for clarity and succinctness.
However you leverage the technology, though, Morrison cautions that one big caveat is that "you still always need to proofread your resume."
"Remember that even if your resume gets through the screening to a recruiter, it will eventually be sent to a hiring manager who has a human eye, who's going to want to read that knowing a human wrote your resume and that there's that authenticity and accuracy to what was written," she says.
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