Is Your Resume 2012 Compliant?

It's the new year and many who are unemployed or just looking to make career change are dusting off their resume. Before you change a few words and submit your resume to a company, you must make sure your resume is 2012 compliant. What's is 2012 compliant business you ask?

It's more of a principle than an actual regulation. However; just like not following regulations can prevent a company from operating, not following the principles involved in having an up to date resume can prevent career seekers from obtaining the career of their dreams.

CareerBuilder blogger Justin Thompson put together a list of 8 things career seekers need to know about making their resume 2012 compliant to give them a much better chance of being reviewed instead of being overlooked with the rest of the outdated resumes.

Here are the first 4 principles:

"1. Stop trying to make 'objective statements' happen.The days of including a career objective and/or professional summary are over. It's a waste of valuable space. Instead, just address this with a sentence in your cover letter about how the position you're applying for fits into your overall career plan. Get to business by starting with accomplishments and facts that are relevant to the job posting.

2. Be concrete.Use numbers and proof of what you've done. "Increased sales by 35 percent through client profiling campaign" is better than "Increased sales in my region." Stop putting generic tasks down, and instead, get creative in portraying what you did in your role or how you brought forth new ideas for products, processes, efficiency, etc. The more you can quantify your efforts with actual numbers or data, the better positioned you'll be.

3. Cover letters are back.Like the "two page versus one page" debate, the subject of cover letters is heated. While some recruiters say they don't bother looking at them, others say some job seekers have grown lazy and won't take the time to write one or tailor one specifically to the company to which they are applying. It's a perfect opportunity to sell yourself, and it's where you can infuse personality into your application. But once you craft a terrific cover letter, don't just push it out to every job prospect. Take the extra few minutes to tailor it to why you want that specific job at that specific company and why your skills would benefit the overall organization if hired.

4. Keywords are your friend.If a recruiter or manager can put your resume side-by-side with the job requirements and check off the same keywords, you've made his life so much easier. Instead of using a lot of useless jargon on your resume, pay attention to the keywords in the job posting. Be sure to use them in your resume and cover letter, because even applicant tracking systems are based on keyword searches. Just as you use keywords to search for jobs, employers are using keywords to find your resume."

Find out what the other 4 principles are by clicking here!

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picture source: bestsampleresume.com