How to write a great HR resume 

As a human resources manager, you may have looked over hundreds or even thousands of different resumes from a myriad of different applicants. But when it comes to writing your own resume it can be difficult to figure out what your strengths, weaknesses and unique identifiable skills are. A few things you might want to ask yourself are; Why are people going to remember me? Why am I a good hire? Do I have any value to my new employer?

In this article, we have listed a few tips and tricks to create a great personal HR resume.


Use a Well-Branded Headline

Firstly, you have to start of your resume with something that identifies it. At the top of your resume will be your name and contact details, as well as possible a LinkedIn profile or other work-related socials. Just below this needs to be your personal headline. This headline is a few words that are designed to showcase exactly who you are as a person and why you’re good for the job. It needs to be readable in a glance, and have a lot of info, but in just a few words.

An example of an effective yet simple headline for other roles could be; Confidence Building Brand Strategist. Following along these lines should be able to give you a fairly good headline that easily gets your personality, role, and history across in just a few words.

These headlines are a relatively new addition as they replace the older and less used Career Summary and Professional Profile headings which used to be far more common. If you need some extra help here, as it is fairly difficult, you can check out Upskilled for some resume writing assistance and further information.


Add Some Information About Your Previous Workplace

Next up is adding some information on where you’ve worked and how well you’ve worked in each business. This is to make sure that whoever is going over your application understands your history and where you’ve come from and what you can offer the businesses with your previous job roles.

This can be outlined be going over the total number of employees in the business as well as the revenue and location. You can also add in the industry that you worked in as well as some extra information that you might think will give the reader more in-depth look at the company you worked for.

These information points are great to add as they give your future employer some data on what type of environments you’ve worked in before and can gauge whether you’ve come from a fast or slow paced environment. Which will certainly be relevant to the new role.



Emphasise Achievements

This segment of the resume is one of the essential pieces to make perfect as it will round out what you can do and what you have done in the past to make your previous business run more optimally.

Now although information on your education, knowledge, and experience is important to add, you still need to fill your readers with more information on what they would be curious to know, and that’s what you’re good at and what you’ve achieved.

Keep these achievements locked to how you’ve made your workplace better, like sales goals, efficiency achievements and other measurable achievements. This could be things like how you’ve made your previous HR organisation more efficient and stronger as well as how you’ve assisted with the development of employee and inter-company culture.
 

Highlight HR Keywords

These aren’t typically like the keywords used for search engines and categorisation, but rather the keywords that readers will look for when they quickly scan a document with their eyes before fully reading over it. So, use our natural human need to skim everything first to your advantage here, and weave in as many keywords as possible to make sure your resume isn’t looked over and immediately moved to the bin.

The types of keywords you want to implement into your resume can include words like “Core Competencies” or “Skill Summary,” just generally section titles that will contain a wealth of relevant information that the ready will need to know in order to correctly evaluate you for the role.  


Prepare Your Resume for Computer Tracking

A more modern requirement and a surprising one if you haven’t written or submitted a resume in a long time, is preparing it in a way that is easier to be scanned by computers and automatic tracking systems.

This means you’ll need to look specifically for rules regarding the type of system an agency might be using to scan their applicant’s resumes, though a typical rule to follow is laying out the information on your resume in the most simple and common ways possible. That means name and info in the top right, left or centre and to also keep your keyword density natural and not overly stuffy or you could have a flagged resume.


Share What Makes You Special

Lastly, don’t forget to include in your resume all of the individual items to make you special for the position as well as the workplace. If you’re someone who cheers people on or deals well with speaking to large groups of people then make sure to say this.

Outline a few other things like the qualifications or certificates you might’ve gained outside of work and also other relevant credentials and affiliations you might have been a part of, or still are, that make you a standout applicant for the role.

Remember that the reader is someone who’s never met and you and truly knows nothing about you, so this is the time to make sure that they know the best you have to offer to their organisation.