Hiring managers and recruiters, like everyone else, use their mobile phones for everything, and that includes reading resumes.
You can bet that if your resume doesn't display well on their phone, they'll skip it. So you need to make sure you are going to put your best (mobile) foot forward.
Simplifying is the single most important thing you can do to keep your resume from looking terrible on a phone.
The following elements do not translate well and should be removed:
You get colors in the wrong place, sentences appearing at the wrong size, sidebars appearing in the center of the page, text overlapping, and all sorts of other issues. It looks really cool. 15 Free Creative Resume Templates for Photoshop and Illustrator. 15 Free Creative Resume Templates for Photoshop and Illustrator. An amazing application can be the first step to landing your dream job. We've compiled the best free professional resume templates for Photoshop and Illustrator. Some packages include cover letters and business card templates. Read More
Instead, keep everything simple. Use fonts that display well on any device, are easy to read on smaller screens, and don't take up a lot of space. Donna Svei of Avid Careerist recommends Calibri, Avenir, and Gill Sans. Avenir is a bit larger than the other two, so she might as well remove it as an option (or make it more useful, if it can't fill two pages).
Using multiple columns, sidebars, pull quotes, charts or graphs, single bullet points, background colors or images, and anything other than black text on a white background is also a bad idea for mobile reading. These things help you make a resume that stands out. But if it doesn't show up on a phone, it's not going to do you much good.
Keep things simple with a good font choice, no extra features, and a simple layout. It's boring, but it might keep a recruiter's attention on your resume long enough to land you an interview.
Conventional wisdom holds that You have about six seconds to impress a hiring manager. with your resume. That's still true when your grades are displayed on a five-inch screen. You may not even get that time.
This is why you should consider the following sections at the top of your resume. The best internet job search advice to improve your resume. The Best Internet Job Search Advice to Improve Your Resume The best resume writing advice from experts who are in the recruiting business. These best practices can make all the difference in your next job search. Read more :
This is a brief summary of what makes you a great fit for the position you are applying for. You could highlight relevant experience and training. Or it could emphasize past results. Anything you think will help you get the job can be listed here.
Ideally, most or all of this section will fit on a small screen without any scrolling, so keep that in mind when you're working on it. A mobile resume should not have sections that are longer than a few lines, and this part is no exception. A compelling highlights section will convince a recruiter to read the rest of your resume, where he can lay out her qualifications in more detail..
Once you have a resume loaded in front of you, you can focus on making it mobile. Make sure bullets and sections have enough space between them. This prevents your resume from becoming a giant, hard-to-read block of text. There are also many other tweaks you can make to Word lists to clean it up.
Executive resume writer Donna Svei recommends using no more than two or three lines of text, and never more than four lines . If your resume currently has long paragraphs or lists, you may want to reconsider how you're presenting your qualifications. Be more concise and don't use as much text. It will make it much easier to read on a phone, and probably on a desktop as well.
Donna also suggests using 1.25-inch margins (which can be found in the Layout section of the ribbon) to make everything easy to read.
A good way to save space is to change the format of how you write certain things. For example, dates can be condensed from “October 2016” to “10/16.” If you handle $20,000 in assets, you could say “Managed $20k in assets” instead of “Overseen the management and maintenance of $20,000 in liquid assets.” Things like that can make a big difference in the way your resume appears. on a small screen.
Including some hyperlinks on your resume can also be very helpful for recruiters. Copying and pasting a URL from a phone is much more effort than on a computer. So a simple touch to send you an email, check your portfolio or view your social profiles will be greatly appreciated.
As you can see in the image above of my own resume on an iPhone, I pulled out things like the cities I worked in and shortened the names of my titles and skills. All of these settings create more white space and make your document easier to read.
Before you submit your new mobile resume, it's a good idea to test it out. Send it to yourself and watch it on your phone and tablet. Have someone else with a different device watch it too. Try different formats if you don't like how it is displayed. PDFs tend to scale very well 4 Ways to Compress and Reduce PDF File Size 4 Ways to Compress and Reduce PDF File Size Are PDFs too big to handle? You can often drastically reduce the size of your PDF documents. We show you how you can reduce and compress PDF files. Read More
Once you've made sure your resume looks as good on a phone as it does on your computer or on a piece of paper, you're ready to submit it and continue your job search. Make Sure You Include the Right Keywords How to Get Your Resume Past the Applicant Tracking System How to Get Your Resume Past the Applicant Tracking System Nine out of 10 large employers now use a robotic applicant tracking system to screen your resume . We help you avoid your judgmental algorithms with simplification and keywords. Read More
Recruiters and hiring managers use their phone as much as everyone else, which means they're viewing your resume on a very small screen. Not optimizing your resume for mobile could mean it gets overlooked. Don't make this mistake. By following the steps above, your resume will be simple, clean, and look good on a mobile screen. It may not get you the job, but it will get you one step closer.!
Do you make sure your resume is mobile friendly? Do you have any experience with this process? Share your thoughts and best tips in the comments below!
