Transform Your Resume in Just 15 Minutes with These Expert Tips (Half of This Article is Free!)

Quick Fixes to Maximize Your Resume Potential

Hi everyone! It’s Helen. I’ve spent the last few days maximizing my resume with some easy tips and updates and I thought I would share these quick resume and CV tips with you.

Please remember you can totally share this email either by sending to your friends or on social media if you think someone else would find the tips helpful. (Bonus: that helps me too, we both win!)

A random resume template I picked only because the colors work with my theme. There is one glaring thing I’d change about this, which I’ll divulge to my paid subscribers down below

Years ago, in and among my hair loss videos, I made this YouTube video about how to address employment gaps when looking for work, so I thought it might be nice to revisit the topic of improving resumes and CVs.

Let’s jump right in ⬇️

Quick Tips for Updating Your Resume

🏠 Delete your street address. When’s the last time a potential employer sent you a letter instead of phoned or emailed you? It doesn’t happen, and if they need your address, they will ask. It’s a security risk. Please remember resumes get printed off and left on desks or even pinned on cubicles. (As a former senior editor who sometimes hired editors and interns, I’m guilty of this. 15 years ago, I would pin resumes to the wall before interviews so I could familiarize myself with the candidates, until I realized it compromised too much personal info of applicants. Dumb mistake.)

✅ Add your skills. Either add a skill section, or use the summary/objective area to highlight your skills instead. What skills should you add? They should mirror the job application you’re aspiring to. My skills when I was a video content creator for example would probably be something like: Google Workspace, Canva, YouTube Studio, iMovie. Be sure to add soft skills too: Communication skills, research skills. Again, you don’t have to pull these from the air: have a look at your job application or FIND a job application in your field and use the same keywords they do.

💻 Rename your document. Instead of naming your file HelenAveryResume.docx or .pdf  or worse with blank spaces, Helen Avery Resume.docx or .pdf, use this format with underscores or hyphens

Helen_Avery_Resume or Helen-Avery-Resume (docx or pdf)

Why? Because the recipient of this digital document if you use spaces, will often get gunky names that flummox their computers: helen%avery%resume. You don’t want that. While HelenAveryResume is not technically a problem, it’s a bit hard to read. Squishing the words together with nothing between them is actually called Camel Case, if you didn’t know.

💁🏻‍♀️Pay to have your resume proofread. Common typos, strange inconsistencies and flights of fancy on resumes are not only common but are the norm, in my experience. Paying a resume service or an actual editor to proofread your resume is worth the small investment. Trust me, I bought a Charlotte Tilbury blush that broke one month later, and that was $65. That was not worth it. Getting a resume proofread is worth it.

According to my research, the average price for having a resume or CV proofread by a professional is typically around $50 to $100. This is a better life investment than a blush, in my humble opinion. 

Help, I Need a Resume Proofreader

If you don’t have anyone to proofread your resume or you lack the bandwidth to find someone, if I have the time, I can do it for you. Get in touch with me via email: helenavery@substack.com and let me know what country you’re in and I’ll tell you the fee. I’m not trying to build a resume proofreading business here, but whenever I post about resumes people ask me for suggestions on who to hire and I never have any. I may as well recommend myself at this point as I have been editing resumes for people in my network for almost three years now.

⬆️ Those are my 15 minute resume makeover tips for career advancement

If you have a bit more time, here are some more simple ways to make your resume stand out, an exclusive for my paid subscribers. 

If you upgrade to a paid subscription right now, you’ll get instant access to the other half of this article below the line including:

📑 Immediately discover the exact part of your resume you need to focus on so it pops out 

👓 Instantly see my personal resume for inspiration, including where to get the exact template I used FREE

🛑 Why you shouldn’t use an Objective section anymore

🔢 The role numbers play on your resume and CV

👩‍👦‍👦 How to address a break or gap in employment if you are a stay-at-home mom, had an illness or worked as a family caregiver

Want to find out and improve your resume? It’s $5 a month or $50 a year to support this online publication AND you can ask me all the questions you like about this article.

Simple Ways to Make Your Resume Stand Out ⬇️