5 Tools To Spring Clean Your Resume - Work It Daily

5 Tools To Spring Clean Your Resume - Work It Daily You probably don’t like spring cleaning; it’s about as tiring and tedious as updating your resume. But like spring cleaning, improving your resume has a huge payoff. Think of the resume as your home, cleaning it come spring gives it a fresh look and makes it look welcoming for guests. An updated or “cleaned” resume, on the other hand, gives you the upper hand when an unexpected opportunity (a job offer or a recruiter) comes knocking at your doorstep. Related: 3 Tools For Creating An Attention-Grabbing Resume Fortunately, spring cleaning your resume doesn’t need to be as exhausting as cleaning your house. You might even have fun doing it. For Applying A Dash Of Color... Let’s start with something easy. Instead of creating a resume from scratch or spending hours updating your old resume, let’s go for an easy BIG WINâ€"turning your boring LinkedIn profile into an eye-catching resume. Re.vu uses LinkedIn data to create a graphical resume, packed with numbers: years of work experience, performance metrics, number of sales you’ve made or money you’ve saved for your company, and so much more. You don’t need for graphic design experience; Re.vu takes care of all that for you. If you want more options, such as adding projects and work not displayed on your LinkedIn profile, check out Enthus.me. It’s very similar to Re.Vu but it gives you the option to add more information like: Audio and Video Presentationsâ€"including presentations and papers you’ve published in SlideShare Past and Current Projects not tied to a work experience listed on LinkedIn Insights- a placeholder for ideas and snippets of information that will add to your expertise For Scrubbing Out Typos... Spelling mistakes and elementary grammar slips are a turn-off; luckily Grammarly can easily spot them for you. It only takes a few seconds to copy an entire resume and scan it through Grammarly, a few minutes more and you can easily improve or correct your resume based on the suggestions provided. The paid version of their service has synonym suggestions for overly used words, which can be used to improve both your resume and cover letter. For Improving Resume-To-Job Ad Matching... Most resumes don’t get readâ€"even the good ones. And that’s not because recruiters are lazy. No, it’s because 72% of resumes don’t have the keywords recruiters want to see. You can spend a month and a king’s ransom on the perfect resume, but if it doesn’t have the specific words for the job you’re applying for, it won’t get read. It’s that simple. To improve the chances of your resume getting read, use Resunate to compare your resume against the job posting. Just upload your resume or LinkedIn profile, whichever you’ll use to send your application, and then paste the exact text of the job ad. Resunate will then show how your resume will look like to companies that use software to summarize or extract resume data. Based on the report, you’ll know what to add, edit, or remove on your resume to improve your odds of getting an interview for every application you send. For Checking Out Who’s Viewing you... Don’t you just hate it that you can’t find out if your resume was ever read? Well, now you can. After improving your resume, upload it to ResumeBear so it can track if your resume was viewed, printed or downloaded. This app will help you track the progress of your application and to some extent; it serves as a reminder to follow up, or to pursue another lead. When It's Time To Call The Cavalry When is it time to call for professional help? That depends on where you are in the job hunt: When you’ve sent the resume about 10 times without receiving so much as an invite If you’ve been unemployed for 6 months or more If you’re undergoing a career transition If you’re looking for a promotion but are not sure how to position yourself in the best way possible The truth is, whether you need professional help or not really depends on how you view your situation. If you feel like you’ve tried everything to no avail, then it’s time to call in the cavalry. However, if you are optimistic of your plans or if you have no trouble getting an interview when applying for a job, just carry on and see where the road takes you. Now it’s your turn. Try one of these tools then let me know if it improved the look and feel of your resume. Of course, these are just some of the tools I know of right now. This post was originally published on an earlier date. Related Posts How To Spring Clean Your Resume 3 Things That Make Your Resume Less Effective 5 Great Tools That Showcase Your Skills To Recruiters   Photo Credit: Shutterstock Have you joined our career growth club?Join Us Today!