Resume Best Practices for 2023 with Specialist Staffing Group

Tiaryn Daniels, Senior Recruitment Consultant at Specialist Staffing Group, shares her talk, “Land Your Dream Career in Tech, Resume Best Practices for 2023, with our amazing partner Specialist Staffing Group.” She breaks down each section of a resume and highlights the information that should and should not be included. She shares valuable information on how to get your resume noticed and tips on successfully getting moved through Applicant Tracking System.

My role with my team is Senior recruitment consultant on our Salesforce Contracts team on the East Coast. I landed in recruitment kind of by accident. My educational background is in international studies and economics. I love learning about people and markets. Those get to come together in my work in recruitment. I want to talk about SThree and the Specialist Staffing Group.

It can be a little bit confusing. Globally, we are branded as SThree, based out of the UK. In the United States, we’re branded as Specialist Staffing Group. You’ll see Specialist Staffing Group and SThree, the same company, with slightly different branding. The brand that I work for is called Computer Futures. We have multiple other brands like Real, Huxley, and Madison Black. You’ll see some other brands that are underneath our company as well. Our purpose is to bring skilled people together to build the future. We aim to be the top STEM talent provider in the best STEM markets. We’re all recruiters, but just working in different sectors.

The market has been rapidly changing. When these numbers were taken, it may not be accurate to what is happening today.  When we talk with our clients, 75% say they are still actively hiring in some way. We know we hear a lot about hiring freezes, and those exist, but there are still so many clients looking for qualified candidates. 56% said hiring levels were back to normal from pre-COVID levels. 48% say they’re considering a wider pool of candidates for various reasons. That’s something to be optimistic about. There’s been a 300% increase in job applications compared to 2019. We know more people have been hiring, and we know more people are switching jobs. It’s a very active market. In talking to clients, 70% said finding the right talent is challenging. Sometimes the jobs exist, and there’s only sometimes a match-up between the talent and the hiring people.

With that rapidly changing market, there’s been a fundamental change in demand for soft skills and virtual processes. The previously inaccessible openings for talent pools have changed through hybrid and remote work. You can be in Minneapolis and working in a job out in New York. That provides a lot more opportunities. There’s also been a lot more demand for resilience as a key skill. When things change so frequently, you must be resilient in the market. Employers are looking for people who are flexible, resilient, and willing to grow as times change. There is a heightened focus on cultural integration because you might work with people worldwide. Everyone used to be in an office together, and that’s changed. Integration and cultural competence are such important skills. We’ve seen interviews and onboarding adapted for a virtual world.

There has been an accelerated adoption of flexible working. There are remote roles, but many more companies are looking for people to return to the office. The flexibility to work hybrid if you have it is excellent. If you’re looking for a role, what’s most important upfront is that you’re setting yourself up with a good job search strategy, knowing your skill sets and strengths. You want to know a general idea of what you’re looking for. Job titles can vary whether or not you’re a Salesforce consultant or a Salesforce Developer. Sometimes, they mean the same thing. Having a general idea of what you’re looking for is important. We always recommend creating a timeline. We know that timelines don’t go perfectly. They’re only sometimes meant to go perfectly. We recommend creating and sticking to a job plan to set yourself up for success. We call it controlling the controllable. That might mean applying to 10 jobs a day or editing and updating your resume by the end of the week. Whatever that looks like for you, set a timeline for yourself.

Use tools to make your job search easier. I got my job off of LinkedIn Recruiter. I think it was one of those easy-to-apply opportunities. I’m a big fan of LinkedIn. Ensuring you have an active LinkedIn profile will be a great way to set yourself up. They have great job opportunities on LinkedIn, and you can set alerts. If you want to look for a job as a Salesforce architect, you can set up a job alert that will let you know when a new job is posted that fits that description. Use job search engines or local job boards. Those are important whether or not you choose to use a company like Dice, LinkedIn, or Indeed. I’ve even been hearing about some Salesforce Discord chats recently that I didn’t know existed.

Whatever your niche specialty is, there’s likely a community of people there who know about jobs, who are hiring, and who want to help you that way. Keep a close eye on when your dream company is hiring. One thing that I’ve seen more and more recently is larger clients, like, let’s say, JP Morgan, will have something on their website where you can go and submit your resume. A recruiter will contact you if something comes up in that picture profile. You can proactively submit your resume to the client, and then when an opportunity comes up that fits, the recruiter will call you.

Identify your key skills. Ask someone you know, who you work with or went to school with, what skills they think you’re good at. Some prompting questions you can ask them are, “In what situations or with what tasks do I do particularly well? What skills do I use in those situations?” Hopefully, you know some of your skills, but it’s always great to get the opinion of someone who’s seen your work or seen you learn and pull some of those things out for you. Look at those skills and decide what is important and what you want to highlight. I ask every candidate I work with, “What are two or three things that make you stand out in this role?” For those skills to be at the forefront, you have to know them. According to the World Economic Forum, the most in-demand skills by 2025 will be analytical thinking, complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, leadership, social influence, resilience, and agility. The top five capabilities are creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability, and time management. They all go hand-in-hand with the market we find ourselves in, especially regarding remote or hybrid work.

A CV or resume will tell the recruiter or whoever you’re working with a lot about you, your skills, and previous experiences. The overall purpose is to convince the reader to invite you to an interview, as it’s your first opportunity to make a positive impression. You can be the best worker in the world, but if your resume doesn’t show ways to highlight that, you may never be able to make it to an interview. Resumes are not one-size-fits-all. The tips and tricks are not one-size-fits-all. You get to decide how to showcase yourself. A CV or Resume should include only some of what you’ve ever done. A CV is more comprehensive. It’s going to show all of your relevant work experience. Your resume is only going to be about one to two pages. You don’t necessarily need to explain your work gaps, especially during COVID. The biggest myth I want to bust is that embellishing is okay. I hear people say, even people I’ve worked with, “Oh, yeah, everyone lies on their resume.” You can lie on your resume, and there’s a chance that you won’t get caught. I have seen on multiple occasions candidates that we’ve worked with who they’ve been the manager’s favorite; they were going to get an offer. Then the manager asks about something on the resume, and the candidate’s like, Oh, I don’t know that. I’ve never worked with that. I don’t know why that’s on there. The manager no longer offers the candidate. We’ve seen it on multiple occasions.

I always recommend that if you even only know something a little bit or have worked on it on one project, put that on your resume. I don’t recommend making it bright and colorful for tech resumes. If you’re making a website, you can do whatever you want with that. You don’t need to include a photograph, age, or gender. That’s not a client’s business. You want to put your contact details, a personal statement, and all of your previous relevant work experience, your education experience, and qualifications. You want to include certifications. Include the relevant work experience, the company, your job title, when you were there, and a couple of bullet points around specific things you did on that project. If you have some space, include additional skills and interests, especially if you have a Ph.D. and volunteer

At the top, include your contact information, first and last name, email address, and phone number. You don’t need to list your full address on your resume. It’s your decision, but I think a city and a state or maybe a zip code are perfectly enough information around your location. We recommend keeping your profile up there and any relevant education. The personal statement should be right at the top of your resume. It should be a concise paragraph just below your name and contact details. It tells the reader why you’re the right candidate for the company.

You may only need a short personal statement if you’re writing a cover letter. That is up to you. Your statement should briefly explain who you are, your suitability for the role, and your immediate career goals. It should be 150 words or five lines of text, formatted in the same font and point size as the rest of your resume. Keep it as clean as possible. You can choose whether you write that personal statement in the first or third person. Be honest, and that includes in your statement. Give as many specifics as you can and include statistics from your career. If you include that in bullet points later when discussing your roles, you can get into a manageable amount of detail in your statement.

You must be as specific or detailed as possible when describing your roles. Keep it concise with bullet points and get into specifics. Don’t be afraid to take some ownership of the work that you’ve done. I feel like a lot of people are hesitant. Own up to the work that you did and be proud of it. Ensure that your resume is tailored to each job. I know people are applying for many jobs, so sometimes it’s hard to tailor every resume exactly. A little bit of tailoring will give you the best opportunity to succeed. Your resume should be structured. It should be neat and professional. Include positive experiences from your previous workplace and throughout your life. Ensure that these are the most relevant experiences for your applying role. Include important info upfront because people aren’t reading every single resume. They’re looking at the top, glancing through, and trying to decide immediately whether or not it’s worth it to go through every single line. You want to make sure that the important things stand out. Clarify things if there’s any chance that the manager might be confused about what anything like PD 1, which is Platform Developer, might stand for. Don’t make your resume any more than two pages long. There are exceptions because many of the more technical roles want a little bit more of a CV version where you’re listing out more of your experience. Please don’t be afraid to include all the relevant information that might be helpful on a CV. We do not recommend adding your references to your resume, which they should ask for later. Keep it as standard as possible.

Applicant Tracking System is software that manages the recruiting and hiring process. An ATS is used to recommend the most qualified candidates and ax out candidates who they know immediately won’t be a fit that doesn’t include any of the keywords. It will conduct a preliminary analysis of the applicants to find the best fit for the job. That’s not to say a recruiter or someone in talent acquisition won’t look through any of the other resumes, but an ATS is used when they’re a large volume of resumes. It also may look for some of those keyword or AI-type algorithms.

I recommend looking at the job description and seeing what keywords are in there. If the job description says we want someone who has worked on SQL, ensure you include that somewhere in your resume. Don’t lie, and don’t be afraid to highlight a minor experience that you’ve had. Avoid using images to share information about yourself. Include both the acronym and the long form when using a phrase. Ensure your resume is saved as readable text, and most often, we find that to be Word. Use standard section headers and a simple font. The ATS will also track the jobs you’ve applied to in the past if it’s for the same company.