Resume Writing Tips: Inspiration in Four Easy Clicks

By Andrea Mitchell-Khan Senior Technical Recruiter, IT/Cyber

Have you hit a wall when it comes to creating valuable content on your résumé? Are you at a loss regarding where to turn for inspiration? Whether it's an entirely new résumé, an extreme makeover, or just an update, below is a swift and easy way to plug into a source of inspiration for resume writing in just four easy clicks

A quick but important aside before we get into that. Your career is one of the most important parts of your life, and it deserves a well-crafted strategic plan. We strongly recommend you work with a professional business coach to develop one and make the most of it. That coach may help you create your résumé, or refer you to a professional résumé writer -- these are must-have resources for your career.

However, they are going to ask you what content should be included, and that's where the four clicks come in. Part of the process is thinking through the main topics you plan to cover. This part of the process can be labor intensive. Did you include the most relevant topics for your field? Did you leave anything out? What are your competitors incorporating in their résumés? How will your résumé stack up to the competition? To help answer those questions, let's start clicking.

1. Click to open MS Word. This is the first step that will take you to a swift and affordable source of inspiration for adding valuable content to your résumé.

2. Click to open a blank document. Once you do this, you will see tabs at the top of the document page (not the application window). These may vary depending on your OS and version of Word, but should include things like “File”, “Home”, “Insert”, “Design”, “Layout”, “Review”, and others.

3. Click to open the “Review” tab.

4. Click to open Resume Assistant. This incredibly useful function gives you access to inspirational resume snippets from actual professionals in whatever field you select. Just fill in the role and industry of choice at the top of this tool, and the Resume Assistant will connect with LinkedIn to provide you with a wealth of creative topics to cover, skills to consider, relevant articles to read and finally jobs related to the position.

Of course you don't want to simply copy and paste -- your résumé should be as unique and individual as you are -- but this tool will provide some great suggestions. To get some examples for this blog post I used "Cyber Security Analyst" as the role and Banking as the industry. Work experience examples included:

"Worked on the Cybersecurity Incident Response Team within the Technology Risk Management group."

"Responsible for collecting, researching and analyzing potential attaches, new vulnerabilities and intelligence-related data from a variety of sources."

You can refine the examples further using a pull-down menu called "filter examples by top skills." In this case, those included information security, penetration testing, firewalls and others. There are also suggestions for top skills, based on those used frequently on other people's résumés. In addition, there are some suggested articles on optimizing your résumé. Added bonus: there are some open job postings that you might want to explore.

There you have it! Résumé content inspiration in just 4 easy clicks!

Need more inspiration? Check out our new career coaching services!