Creating your own resume might seem the easiest and most difficult thing to do at the same time. Some might think that it is enough to fill out a form with their own experiences and apply by crossing their fingers, while others are in full crisis to find the right way to express through a piece of paper, to have the right skills for that job.
The resume is your first step towards a new job. A good resume allows you to get the job interview, necessary to have a job.
Unfortunately, even when you have created your perfect resume, it does not end there. It’s not enough to have a fantastic CV to work. The CV must be perfect for that company and that specific job. That’s why you have to tweak it every time you apply for a different job.
Editing your CV doesn’t mean totally upsetting it or changing the design or inventing new experiences, but highlighting those experiences and skills that are relevant to the job for which you are applying for.
Here’s what you need to do to change your CV to fit each Fashion Job:
Start with the job offer you want to apply for and pay particular attention to the Job Description: the part that lists the activities that the resource will have to deal with once it enters the company. Now look at your previous experiences and report a couple of those activities with a bulleted list, without inventing anything. They can also be similar activities that you will need to highlight.
You must add a bulleted list of activities only for previous experiences that are relevant to the job for which you are applying for: if you were a waitress, you don’t have to include it in your resume when you are applying for a job as a buyer and so you don’t have either to add a description of what you did during that experience. If you worked or did an internship in fashion instead and it is relevant, this is what you need to make stand out: add a bulleted list of the activities you have dealt with and make sure that some of these are in common with the ones of the new job offer.
Then move on to check the requirements in the job offer: technical skills and qualifications and make sure they are present in your resume. You do not have to meet all the requirements to apply for a job and remember to never enter false information in your CV. If Photoshop is a requirement and you add it among your skills, make sure you know how to use it or that you’ll learn it in the next couple of days before a potential job interview. Even if you can’t add in your resume all the requirements or most, apply for the job anyway if you’re interested, don’t let this stop you.
It is super important to use the keywords of the Job Description and the requirements of the new job in your CV. Do you know that an average of 500 people applies for the same position? Some companies, therefore, use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to support and organize the recruitment process. This system scans all the resumes and divides them into groups. Recruiters could add keywords in the system, and if your resume does not contain them, then the scanner will exclude it and no one will look at your CV.
That’s why a single CV is not good and you have to change it every time: you have to insert or remove parts that are relevant or not for that specific position. If you have 3 experiences, one in social media, one as a buyer and one in marketing then you will have to play with the list of activities for each one based on the position for which you are applying for.
So these are the parts you need to tweak every time you apply for a new job:
- the list of activities of your previous experiences
- your technical skills and qualifications
- if you have a description of yourself on your resume, then make sure you update it so that it also contains the keywords (activities and skills) related to the job offer
You don’t have to change the other generic parts of your CV such as the design, your photo, your personal data (date of birth, place, links to social media …).
So every time you apply for a new job, open the resume template file and save it as new PDF for each job.
