27 Resume Tips To Make Your Resume Stand Out In 2024

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You’ve decided to update your resume and get a new job in 2024. But you haven’t yet found a list of actionable resume tips that will help you get your resume noticed by Australian hiring managers.

Well, I am here to support you during your job search with Australian resume templates, examples, advice that de-mystifies industry jargon, and proven resume writing tips that lead to job offers from Australia’s top companies.

By the way, you can give yourself a massive headstart or outsource the task of resume writing altogether by:

1. Quantify Your Achievements.

Hiring managers already know what you do in your day-to-day work, so you don’t need to pack your resume with a laundry list of duties.

Instead, you need to demonstrate impact – and that requires achievements, quantified by hard numbers. Prospective employers want to know:

The easiest and most effective way to describe how you contributed to organisational objectives is by using a method called ARTA (Achieved Result By Taking Action).

Here’s an example of a business development manager’s achievement, before ARTA:

Rewriting it to have more impact using the ARTA method, you get:

Much better, no?

2. Include Power Summaries.

For every role, add a Power Summary that describes:

For example:

Place the Power Summaries just below your job titles and employer names.

They will provide the hiring manager with a strong, commercially relevant context for your responsibilities and achievements.

3. Target A Specific Role.

Don’t try to create a one-size-fits-all resume that covers several role types.

One resume per role type.

Don’t break this rule. Ever.

4. Kill The Resume Objective.

In case you’re wondering, this is the culprit that I’m talking about:

It sometimes goes by different names:

Regardless of the name, it’s useless.

Australian job seekers often added these self-indulgent and meaningless ramblings at the very top of their resumes back in the 1990s. Don’t do it in 2022.

4. Save Time By Writing The Profile Last.

Your resume’s profile highlights your most salient strengths and unique selling points in narrative form.

To avoid writer’s block, write it last – as an exercise in summarising the rest of your resume. It’s much easier to write it once all other resume sections are in place.

Aim for a few snappy paragraphs that tell the hiring manager what makes you uniquely capable of solving specific organisational challenges.

Above is my tongue-in-cheek take on what the profile on Elon Musk’s resume could look like.

5. Get The Length Right.

Australian resumes run between one page and five pages, with the vast majority coming in somewhere in the middle of that range.

My guide to resume length provides precise guidelines, but you can simply follow the rules of thumb below.

6. Impress Hiring Managers By Eliminating Ambiguity.

Resumes are notorious for being full of vague, fluffy statements that read like they were written using a thesaurus.

You know the ones:

Ugh.

Go on a hunt for these non-­specific generalisms like “various companies” and replace them with specific details, facts, figures and, examples. You’ll end up with:

Or, instead of saying:

Explain what “positive commercial outcomes” really meant in that context by communicating what you did (leading with an action verb), and why you did it (demonstrating the positive impact your actions had), to arrive at:

(Related: How To Write A Cover Letter In Australia).

7. Address Any Employment Gaps.

If you’ve taken time off work to see the world, have a family, or any other reason, that’s great.

Be transparent about breaks. This includes gaps caused by events outside of your control like company restructures and redundancies.

8. Don’t Rip Off The Job Description.

Borrowing sentences from the job description is a terrible idea.

Most job descriptions are tactical in their scope and task-driven in their language – because they are written by junior staff who don’t have a full view of the role’s contributions to the organisation’s strategic priorities.

If you embrace a job description or a job ad as a departure point for your resume, you’ll unintentionally play down your experience and pitch yourself at a lower level of seniority.

9. Don’t Go Back Further Than 15 Years.

I understand the desire to include your entire work history on your resume. After all, you want to look experienced.

However, professional resume writers usually take the opposite approach.

They showcase your most recent and greatest hits, detailing between 3 and 6 roles from the last 15 years of your working history.

What if you have more than 15 years of employment history?

Split those roles out into a separate “Additional Career History” section, and place them directly below the “Professional Experience” section. Keep the resolution of those roles quite low.

10. Use The Reverse Chronological Resume Order.

You should stick with the reverse-chronological format. This is the most popular resume format, and your hiring manager will feel very familiar with it.

(Related: Guide To The Best Resume Formats).

The reverse chronological order is the most effective at presenting the experience of job seekers with 5-20 years of experience.

If you’re reading this article, you probably fall within this group.

11. Improve The Visual Appeal.

This is one of the most important resume writing tips.

Make sure that your resume is easy on the eye. Use white space to break up text sections and use bullet points to highlight critical information, and:

If your resume “feels” too dense, it probably is. Hiring managers will appreciate you splitting content across additional pages to make the resume easier to skim and read.

12. Remove All Instances Of “Responsible For…”

Instead of using the overused “responsible for,” use specific language that accurately describes your role and responsibilities.

For example, instead of saying:

Say:

13. Delete Buzzwords.

If it’s generic and meaningless, it does not belong on your resume. Read your resume again, hunt down all buzzwords and replace them with precise, commercially relevant phrases.

Words to avoid:

14. Don’t Overshare The Private Stuff.

Don’t include any personal information on your resume. This includes things like your:

Personal information has no place on a resume and including it could open doors for unfair discrimination.

15. Set The Right Font Size.

Keep the font size variation to a minimum. Your resume should not use more than 3 different font sizes.

If in doubt, use:

16. Don’t Use Boring Fonts.

Fonts affect the overall look and feel of your resume.

Don’t fall into the trap of choosing either a dull (or a very ostentatious) font. I’ve written an entire guide to resume fonts in Australia, but if you just want a quick recommendation, use one of the following:

All of these are attractive and highly readable fonts that will add a level of polish to your resume.

17. Honesty Is The Best Policy.

Don’t lie on your resume. Ever.

Be honest about your qualifications and experiences.

If you’re caught lying on your resume, you’ll lose your credibility with a recruiter (and potentially an entire recruitment firm or employer).

You’ll destroy all chances of getting hired – not just for a particular role, but for any future roles with that recruitment firm or organisation.

18. Bold And Italics Add Emphasis.

You can improve readability and highlight relevant skills using bold and italics.

That said, don’t go overboard.

19. Be Careful With Hobbies And Interests.

Include anything that demonstrates your ability to beat the competition or your desire to see others succeed. For example:

Resist the temptation to include interests that don’t require you to produce a remarkable result. For example:

20. Double-Check The Dates.

Are your employment dates correct? You’ll be surprised how many people submit job applications that contain incorrect periods of employment.

It will look bad and cast a shadow over your entire job application.

21. Include Social Media URLs.

Include the URLs of your LinkedIn profile and any other relevant social media accounts.

A social media feed of your bird-watching photos isn’t important in the context of a job application as an interior designer, but your Behance portfolio of work is.

22. Optimise For Robots.

50% of resumes never get seen by a human recruiter or a hiring manager because they get filtered out by an ATS.

Applicant Tracking Systems are recruitment software packages that assess your suitability for a specific role by scanning your resume for relevant keywords and key phrases.

Defeat these harsh resume critics by including a healthy mix of keywords from the job description in your key skills section.

For example, if your job title is project manager, your key skills section may look something like this. Keywords from the job ad are highlighted:

23. Tighten Up The Skills Section.

The key skills section must prominently display your most relevant strengths, either using 5-8 bullet points (see resume tip above for an example) or a table.

Its purpose is to give prospective employers an at-a-glance view of the hard and soft skills that qualify you for the role.

Make sure that you only list relevant skills. They must be aligned with the role you’re applying for.

Some examples of hard skills include:

Some examples of soft skills are:

24. Delete Your Photograph.

In certain parts of the world, including a photo on your resume is normal practice – but it’s not in Australia.

Do not include one on your resume – unless a job description specifically asks you to include it.

25. Include “References Available Upon Request”.

Don’t add references to your resume, but mention that they’re just an email away.

26. Include A Professional Email Address.

Your email address must look like it belongs to a mature adult. Don’t use the same email address that you’ve had since high school.

Think johnanderson101@gmail, not tallandhandsome101@gmail.com

27. Proofread Your Resume 3 Times.

This may be one of those resume tips that’s too obvious to mention, but I’ll do it anyway.

Don’t forget to check for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors! This is a critical step that too many job seekers overlook.

Every hiring manager has a horror story of a candidate who was about to be invited to interview for a plum gig but got disqualified because of typos in their resume.

Check for any spelling or grammatical errors using your own eyes, then enlist the help of another human. They’ll pick up mistakes that your eyes have missed.

Finally, run your resume through an AI-powered language checker like Grammarly.

On the last read of your resume, make an effort to hunt down and eliminate any generic mumbo-jumbo that may have snuck through:

Need More Resume Writing Tips?

After you’ve finished implementing my resume tips above, you can impress Australian employers even more by learning from my resume writing guides below:

One of the most important resume tips to remember is that your resume is just one piece of the job search puzzle. Don’t forget to:

– Irene