by Ronnie Dauber

Created on: September 18, 2008   Last Updated: May 16, 2012

A resume is the written form of your knowledge, training and abilities that inspires the employer to interview you. You may have a couple different job targets, and that is fine because you can design your resume to suit all of them.

Employers decide in the first eight seconds of reading your resume whether or not they want to learn more about you or toss your resume aside. Therefore, it is crucial you put your most valued assets at the top of your resume.

There are two major differences in how you will present your resume to properly address different job targets.

1) The very first thing you put down on your resume is your goal objective. This will be different depending on what job you are applying for.

Suppose your career goal is to become a senior hi-tech coordinator in a major bank. One of the jobs you are applying for at the present time is for an entry-level data processing clerk for a real estate company, and another job target is for a junior customer service representative for a cable call centre. Neither of these targets is close to your career goal but they are on a similar path.

One standard resume would not be suitable for both of these applications. Therefore, you will need to customize them both by stating how this job opportunity relates to you achieving your career goal.

Suggestion:
Real estate job - "Career objective: to become a senior hi-tech coordinator in a large bank. This position will give me experience in a fast-paced office and give me the opportunity to expand on my computer skills."

Call centre job - "Career objective: to become a senior hi-tech co-ordinator in a large bank. This position will give me customer service experience while strengthening my computer skills."

2) You want to list your skills and qualifications next, and in the order that relates the most to the job you're applying for. Your work experience is necessary as a support for what you know, but it is your abilities that will attract the employer in the first place.

In the scenario of the data entry job, the crux of the job would be keying in data and probably at a relatively fast speed. Therefore, the first skill  you would list is your typing speed and accuracy, followed by your other computer skills. The handling of cash is not a prerequisite for this job so that skill would be listed last.

And in the scenario with the customer service rep, the first skill you would want to list is one relating to customer service, followed by your computer skills since you'll be using a computer data base to perform your job.

Therefore, you'll still be listing all your skills and qualifications, only in the particular order that would impress the employer for that job target.

Your references are never listed on your resume, but instead in that section you'll put, "References to be made available upon request." And then on a separate sheet which will be an appendix to your resume you'll list the references apply to that specific job target.

You could use any previous employment officer for a general character reference, but you'll want to give at lease one specific name as a support for each job target, especially if you have experience in that type of work.

So in essence, the data on your resume remains basically the same for all applications, and the only changes for the different targets are the order in which you show them in.

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