It’s strange to think about how trends may affect resume writing.
After all, resumes aren’t an “industry” that could be affected by customer sentiment. Or, at least, they don’t seem to be at first. But if you think of your resume as a “product” and a hiring manager as the “customer,” it becomes much easier to see that trends affect recruitment as much as they do any other industry. If you are changing jobs and need a professional career transition resume, executive and need a c-suite executive level resume, or anyone wanting to stand out in the pool of job seekers, you need to know the trends coming in 2024.
In 2024, these are the trends that may impact your resume and, as a result, your chances of landing a role.
Trend 1 – The Hybrid Shift
For better or worse, the Covid-19 pandemic changed a lot about how people work. Zoom meetings, working from home, and more flexible schedules were all introduced, often to the benefit of employees as much as employers. But with the pandemic shrinking away in the rear-view mirror, it’s easy to identify one trend that’s here to stay – hybrid working.
Only 20% of “remote-capable” employees now work on-site fully. That doesn’t mean that the other 80% are all solely working from home. Instead, employers usually offer hybrid systems that involve a couple of days in the office and a couple of others from home.
How does that trend affect your resume?
Hybrid work represents a brave new world for hiring managers. They know they have to offer it since 87% of people offered a hybrid role embrace the opportunity, but they also want to know if a candidate is capable of being productive in that setup. So, any hybrid work experience you can add to your resume is a boon for you as a candidate.
Focus specifically on what you achieved in that hybrid environment.
What projects did you complete or oversee? How do you manage your time when you’re at home? Emphasize that you’re an effective – and productive – hybrid worker and your resume will attract more attention.
Trend 2 – The Shift Toward Specifics
“I managed a team and was responsible for an increase in productivity within my department.”
That line sounds like an attractive one to add to your resume. It shows that you have leadership abilities and that you can translate that leadership into creating a well-organized and more productive team.
Or does it?
Read the line again and you’ll see that it’s lacking something – specifics.
There are no details there about the size of the team or how much more productive it became. Instead, what you have is a generic sentence that doesn’t tell a hiring manager much of anything. In 2024, that isn’t going to cut it.
With 88% of recruiters saying that work experience is the most important part of a resume, what they’re really saying is that they want you to get specific. Take this altered version of the above sentence as an example:
“Managed a team of 10 employees in the development of a mobile app, with the incentive scheme I created leading to a 15% increase in productivity over the two-month development period.”
That’s a sentence that’s loaded with specifics. The number of people you managed. What that team was doing and how much productivity increased. These are tangible – or “hard” numbers – that offer useful information to a recruiter. As the job market gets ever more competitive, it’s these little details that are going to help you stand out in 2024.
Trend 3 – Using Keywords in Your Resume
The recruiting process is only becoming more automated.
That’s highlighted by the fact that over 95% of Fortune 500 companies now use some form of ATS (Applicant Tracking System) to sift through the dozens of applications they receive. These systems are designed to pick out “keywords” – specific words used in job descriptions that relate to the role – to shift out resumes that are too generic for a hiring manager’s attention.
There’ll be no rolling back of this reliance on automation in 2024.
Hiring managers use these systems because they save time and highlight resumes that are tailored to the role they’re offering. That means the days of writing a single resume and sending it to dozens of companies are long gone. Recruiters want to see more effort, which means they need to see the keywords they use in their job descriptions being used in the document you submit.
Let’s say the recruiter is looking for somebody to build mobile applications. Straight away, you have a keyword – mobile applications. The recruiter may also specify specific programming languages—such as JavaScript—that are commonly used to make these types of apps. That’s another two keywords that an ATS will look for when it scans your resume.
So, your task in 2024 and beyond is to pay more attention to a job listing. Look for words that are repeated, as well as any skills or qualifications that are emphasized as “must-haves.” Those are the words that need to be in your resume to ensure you get past an ATS.
Staying on Trend Produces Better Resumes
A focus on hybrid experience, more specifics, and the clever use of keywords. Those three trends in resume writing will affect your job prospects in 2024. You’ll see a clear embracing of digitization in these trends—especially with hybrid working and ATS—with the desire for more specifics perhaps being a symptom of less time being spent in the office. Recruiters want to know they’re making the right choice for an employee who may be largely autonomous, which is why they’re placing so much focus on exactly what you’ve done.
You likely need to adapt your resume to these trends.
Enter Expert Resume Pros – a resume service Colorado has to offer. Our team of 34 Tier 3 writers and a 35-year history in the recruitment industry make us the perfect choice to create a resume that’s impactful now and into 2024.
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