ATS Proof- Part 6

It's part six, y'all. It's the final part of our six-part series. So, today we are talking about visual appeal. How does that resume look from a visual perspective? So, without further ado, let's dive in our final part six of our six-part series. Hey there, you professional, ambitious, working mama. Welcome to the Christian Career Coach Podcast. Do you want to achieve remarkable success and experience unwavering faith in your professional journey? Do you find yourself up late at night searching for answers on how to make more money, maintain a positive work-life balance, and achieve exponential career growth? Do you wake up with big ambitious goals only to feel overwhelmed and uncertain when faced with setbacks, frustrations, and unexpected challenges? Well, you're in the right place. I'm Susan Edwards and on this podcast we tackle those exact concerns head-on. We dive deep into strategies to propel your income, accelerate your career growth, and help you align your work with your faith. So, if you're tired of feeling stuck and you're ready to embrace extraordinary success, unwavering faith, and a purposeful life, then join me on the Christian Career Coach Podcast. Together, we'll navigate the obstacles, find clarity amidst chaos, and unlock your true potential. Get ready for inspiration, actionable advice, and powerful insights that will empower you to conquer your fears and create the fulfilling career you've always dreamed of. Let's walk this transformative journey together. Welcome to the Christian Career Coach Podcast, where ambition meets faith and your dreams find their wings. Hey amazing listeners, I want to share an exciting opportunity that can help you thrive in your career while aligning with your Christian values. As a devoted Christian Career Coach, I offer personalized one-on-one coaching sessions designed to empower you to achieve remarkable career growth, maintain a healthy work-life balance, and increase your salary. If you find yourself yearning for more money, missing certifications, or lacking certain job qualifications, I'm here to guide you through the process. With my expertise and faith-based approach, we'll address these challenges head-on and help you overcome them. Together, we'll develop strategies to bridge the gaps and position you for success. Work-life balance is crucial, especially for Christian moms with ambitious career goals. I understand the importance of maintaining harmony between your personal and professional life. Through my coaching program, you'll learn practical techniques to prioritize what truly matters, ensuring you can excel in your career while still nurturing your family and faith. Now let's talk about career growth and the desire for a higher salary. I am here to help equip you with the tools and insights you need to advance in your profession and increase your earning potential. With personalized guidance and a faith-based perspective, we'll unlock opportunities for growth, help you negotiate your worth, and create a path that aligns with your aspirations and Christian principles. To take the first step towards transforming your career, I invite you to book a free 30-minute career clarity call with me. During this call, we'll dive into your goals, address any obstacles, and explore how Christian career coaching can accelerate your journey. Don't let missing certifications or qualifications, work-life balance concerns, or stagnant salary hold you back. Together, we'll navigate these challenges and unlock your God-given potential. To book your free career clarity call, simply visit my website at www.ForwardsCareerServices.com. Let's embark on this transformative journey towards more money, career growth, work-life balance, and a higher salary, all while staying rooted in your Christian faith. I can't wait to connect with you and guide you towards the abundant career you deserve. Visit www.ForwardsCareerServices.com today and take the lead towards a fulfilling and prosperous professional life. Yay! It's part six y'all. We did it. We've made it all the way through our six-part series. So, as you know, today we are talking all about visual appeal, but before we do, I really want to go back and recap each of these six parts. I just want to reiterate that these are really great suggestions and ideas for you to get your resume updated so that it can pass through those applicant tracking systems and actually make it to a person that can actually call you in for an interview. So, hopefully you've been able to work along each day updating the different pieces of this six-part series within your resume. I would love to hear from you if you're getting some good feedback in terms of, you know, when you're applying. Is it making it through your ATF systems? Are you getting called more often for interviews? I'd love to hear from you. So, before we dive in, the first part of the six-part series was all about formatting. So, remember we talked about using that clean professional resume template, making sure that you use standardized fonts so that way it's easy to read, maintaining consistent formatting, so making sure that the font size was similar, headings and spacing, and then saving it as a PDF because PDF really tends to work really well with ATF systems. The second part was all about keyword optimization. So, this is where we we dived into, dived in, dove in, we dove into tailoring your resume to each job description by making sure that you're incorporating those relevant keywords. Then we talked about identifying those keywords by reading through carefully when you read through that job posting and pulling out those industry-specific terms and then making sure that you're able to embed those in your resume. Then we highlighted also including those keywords naturally throughout your resume, especially up in the skills and the experience sections. And then the last point that we made about keyword optimization was to avoid stuffing, overstuffing those keywords. Make sure that you got a good balance between how it reads and including those keywords. The third part of our six-part series was all about clear and concise content. That was all about, you know, making sure that you use concise and impactful sentences to describe your experience and achievements, making sure that you focus on quantifiable accomplishments and specific results. Make sure you use numbers, whether it's percentages or number or dollar amounts, specific numbers. If it's turnover percent, make sure that it's quantifiable. It's an octifiable, numeric accomplishment. The next point that we made was to remove irrelevant or outdated information that doesn't contribute to your current job search. Then the last point that we made about clear and concise content was to prioritize the most relevant information and keep the resume links down to one or two pages. The fourth part of our series is all about section organization and how to organize the different sections on the page. We talked about having that professional summary at the beginning, having your key skills and qualifications section, making sure that you have a detailed work experience section where you're emphasizing those relevant accomplishments, then having your education section where you're listing out your degrees, certifications, and any relevant coursework, then the optional one which was the to consider adding the additional section which is volunteer experience or projects or professional affiliations. The fifth part of our series was all about proofreading and error checking, so checking for all your errors, proofreading your resume thoroughly, look for those grammatical errors, any typos, any punctuation mistakes. We also talked about using those online tools or asking a friend to review your resume to give you that additional perspective. Then we talked about the verb tense. We went back to elementary school and we talked about action words and if they're in the current or the past tense, making sure that it's proper grammar throughout. And then the last point was all about the phone number and email address, making sure that you do not forget that contact information and you make sure that it is correct. The last thing you want is to have your inquiry from a recruiter where they invite you in for something, maybe an interview, and it gets rejected because your email address is wrong or your phone number is wrong. Alright, so that leads us into today which is our sixth and final part of this series which is all about visual appeal. So four quick points that I want to make today. The first being to use bullet points, bolding, and formatting to make your resume visually appealing. I love lists. I love things that look organized whether it's a bullet point list, whether you've got something bolded or highlighted or underlined or italicized. Formatting, make sure that everything lines up either on the right side of the page or the left side of the page, making sure that just visually it looks appealing. If the page does not look visually appealing, it's going to pull the eyes to those sections that are off-balance. So if it doesn't line up, if you've got bolded words in random places that don't really make much sense, the reader has to basically use their brain power to try to figure out what part is being emphasized there which pulls away from the impact that your resume could be making. So make sure that it's visually appealing. The next point I want to make about this is to use white space effectively so that you're enhancing the readability. This is where we talked about is it are you using a heading or a subheading for each of your sections and for each of those sections is there the same amount of space between your first bullet, your first bullet point, and then the heading of that section. That's using that white space effectively to make sure that the reader is not spending time trying to figure out what flow the information should be read in. It just pulls away from the impact of your resume if you're not using that white space effectively. All right, third point for visual appeal is to choose a professional and an appropriate color scheme if applicable. Now this is where we dive into some of those more creative positions. It's perfectly okay if you want to use colors. If you are going for something that is more administrative, more professional, it's best if you can stick to black and white maybe some shades of gray that's okay. If you want to use a color then I would use a neutral soothing color. So think about the colors they recommend you to color to paint your bedroom which is what is it like a blues and greens right because that's soothing colors. If you do a quick Google search on what is the meaning of this particular color whether it's pink or red or yellow or orange you want to make sure that you're using a color that matches the industry. So however you would describe your industry if it's something that you know when you think about an administrative role you think about a desk job, you think about consistent workflows, you think about you don't necessarily think about high emotional feelings that cause you to either get extremely excited or extremely anxious. So if you're seeing colors that are associated with high impact such as red or bold something that's bold that's not necessarily a color that I would recommend for an administrative position. I would recommend you stick to blacks and your grays but of course black and white and gray but if you need to include a color if you're going for that administrative role then I'd stick with you know a blue maybe a navy blue or green like a deep a deep green not like a pop of color or anything like that you want it to be soothing and still look professional. Okay and the fourth and final point for visual appeal is to use consistent formatting for headings subheadings and lists. So again I've mentioned this several times but I want to give you an exercise to do so once you're done once you've implemented all six of these general guidance into your resume I want you to take your resume print it out and hang it on the wall you know just tape it to the wall and then back away from it at least five steps or so far enough so you can't read the words but you just can still see where the sentences start where the bullet points are and that sort of thing but you don't necessarily need to be able to read each of the words that are on the page. When you look at that resume from across the room does it look balanced on the page does the left side look balanced to the right side does the top look balanced to the bottom does each section kind of look balanced does one section need maybe a little bit of critiquing and you'll know when you see it you'll know are some of the headings larger than some of the others do the fonts all match or is it just a cluster that really needs some attention so that would be what I challenge you with if you want to if you want to implement each of these six you know strategies that I've talked about to get through these applicant tracking systems and you decide that I'm going to chip away at my resume I'm going to get each of these six pieces I'm going to update it I'm going to implement everything then hang it up on the wall take a step back and look at it and if it looks visually appealing like that and you've implemented all of these other suggestions then you should be in good shape to make it through those applicant tracking systems obviously remember each of these serves as a general guide for you I still recommend that you tailor it to your specific needs and then adapt it based on the job requirements so good luck with your resume preparation and I hope y'all enjoyed the six-part series on how to ATS proof your resume and I'd love to hear from you I want your feedback so jump on over into my Facebook group at forwards career services or on Instagram send me a DM at forwards dot career dot services and leave me a message and let me know how these guidelines are working out for you on your resume with your job search hey there ambitious mama I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Christian career coach podcast if it resonated with you and provided valuable insights I'd love for you to take just 30 seconds and share this episode with a fellow Christian professional who may benefit from the career advice and inspiration together we can uplift and empower more women on their professional journeys and don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode oh and one more thing that would mean the world to me could you leave a review your feedback and support light me up and let me know that this podcast is making a positive impact in your life as we continue this journey together remember that you're not alone I understand the joys and challenges of being an ambitious mama and I'm here to cheer you on every step of the way so March your calendar because I'll meet you back here next Tuesday for another episode filled with valuable insights and practical tips until then keep chasing your dreams balancing your roles with grace and shining brightly in your career and family life