A Simple Resume is the Best Resume

Should you write a simple resume, or should you write a book and post it to your future employer? If you have found your dream job and you are hoping to build a career, then a long CV is the best choice, even if it means adding images and links to videos. If you have found a minimum wage job, then keep your resume simple. This article teaches you when to keep it simple, when to bulk up your CV, and helps you understand why some jobs are easier to get if you have a simplified CV.

Minimum Wage Jobs Are Easier to Get with A Simple Resume

There are two reasons why a minimum wage job is easier to get with a simplified CV. The first reason is that minimum wage jobs are in great demand, and yet a portion of the applicants will be fully unsuitable for the job. This results in experienced managers and HR departments learning how to blow through a bunch of CVs in no time at all. They want to get through CVs quickly, which means a longer and more complicated CV is not worth their time and is easily ignored.

Recruitment Agencies Do Not Know Any Better

Let’s say you have seen a fantastic job on a recruitment site. Let’s say it is a job you have always wanted, so you write a long and powerful resume when you apply. However, two days later you get an email asking for a simple CV, and you are upset.

The reason you are upset is that you wrote your CV especially for this new job, and you feel like your regular and simplified CV is not powerful enough to get you the job you desire. Sadly, you are right, your longer and more complex CV may have significantly helped you get the job you are lusting after, but the recruitment worker doesn't know any better. All the recruitment worker is interested in is the passing of CVs over to a company for the company to hire people through the recruitment company.

If you have found the job of your dreams and it is advertised on a recruitment agency website, you first need to find out if you can apply for the job without the recruitment agency. For example, Amazon uses recruitment agencies all the time, but they sometimes post local jobs on their website notice boards too. If you can apply straight to the company itself, then use your long CV that fully covers all the reasons why you are perfect for the job. If you must go through the recruitment agency, you may try the larger CV, but have a smaller, more concise one ready to hand over to the recruitment agency.

Write with The HR Department in Mind

We all like to think of our future employer looking over each resume by hand and carefully picking out the best candidate. We spend so much time writing and improving our resumes that it seems only fair that our future employer looks over the CVs carefully, diligently, and fully, but this is rarely the case.

In many cases, your resume will be examined by one or more members of an HR department, which sadly means that a simple resume format is required, and it sadly means your esoteric word uses and displays of raw experience may be lost on the reader.

Pandering to ATS And Automation

Keep It Simple If You Have A Strong CV

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tends to prefer a simple resume. You can fill it with text if you wish, but keep it simple in terms of your layout, the way you enter your details, and keep it simple in terms of tradition. For example, stick to traditions as entering your qualifications and academics in date order, and make sure to add full dates to all your employment entries.

Keep in mind that some form of ATS or automation may affect if your resume is chosen, so write with them in mind. For example, if your previous job titles have more than one name, it may be worth mentioning both in your resume, such as if you were a sales assistant, you might also write that you were a sales associate, sales clerk, salesperson and a seller. That way, when somebody uses the system to find a salesperson, it doesn't matter if the searcher types “Salesperson” or “Sales associate” because your name is going to come up for both.

Not to labor the point, but if you are going for a job you really want, then a long resume may be a good idea because you want to show your future employer everything you have to offer. However, there are some people who are so perfect for a job that they need to keep their CV simple. For example, a person with a Harvard education, an amazing qualification record, and a stellar work experience record, then that person doesn't need to write much because his or her record speaks for itself.

How to Write A Simple Resume

Start with your raw information and build your CV up from there. Your raw information is your contact information, your qualifications/education, and your work experience. You may then add things such as your career objectives, your awards, and other relevant information that is suitable for the job in hand.

When thinking about how to write a simple resume, try to forget about writing less, and instead concentrate on being concise. A simplified resume can be more than one page. The key is to get to the point quickly and efficiently. A wordy resume is not a simple one.

Avoid things such as trying to excuse elements of your CV that appear negative, for example, lower scores in certain qualifications. Also, though you may have to mention that you were fired from a certain job, you do not have to mention it on your simplified CV. You need simply add your start date and your finishing date for each job.

A simplified CV is also laid out in a very basic manner. It has a section for your contact details, a section for your qualifications/education, and a section for your work experience. Any further sections may be added as you require. A simplified CV doesn't have sections that mingle. For example, it doesn't have sections where you explain why you started each job, why you left, and what you learned. That is not the sort of thing that exists in a simplified and basic resume. Remember to keep it concise, get to the point, to start out with raw data and build on it from there.