All too often people attempt to use their resumes as an all-encompassing document of their work lives, but Swain told Blavity that without results, your day-to-day tasks have no place on your resume.

“Lead with your achievements,” she said.

Swain pointed to an example of a resume where a client wrote about various logo designs for the dance and art departments. She changed that sentence to conceptualize 18-plus logos and graphic designs, leveraging Adobe Creative Suite for dance in art departments to elevate Richmond High School’s brand equity.

“This method is called X, Y, Z,” Swain said. “So we’ll say you achieved X that resulted in Y with a Z impact. So the Y would be, what tools did you use? Did you do research? What did you do to get to that goal? And the Z is the impact. So, she didn’t create these logos. What’s happening is that she was able to help student engagement and retention by actually having better-looking graphics because it enticed students to go to the events.”

Recruiters scan resumes quickly, so using the correct language in your resume is essential to landing a job.

“Don’t forget to leverage the systems and tools because that’s also going to open up doors for you when recruiters are quickly scanning,” Swain said. “So because she knows Adobe, she may know SEO, things like that. That’s gonna work in her favor for these recruiters. She just said she created various logos. She didn’t have a number. She didn’t talk about the tools, so that’s a huge difference.”

While leading with your skills, you also want to use numbers whenever possible.

“I like to say quantify if you wanna qualify — I need to coin that,” Swain said. “But basically, numbers talk, so numbers are going to help you to stand out because a lot of times people don’t have it.”

She said that you should include three different types of numbers — teams, percentages and money.

“Maybe you work with three other teams — three cross-functional teams. Another one could be a percentage — maybe you were able to improve efficiency by 22%. And then another one because money talks — maybe you were able to reduce expenses and produce sales. What recruiters are looking at is if you’ve had this impact at this company, will you have it at our potential organization?”

If you’re new to the job market, you can still draft a one-pager based on your nontraditional experiences.

“College students or recent graduates should be highlighting projects and extracurricular activities to show that leadership impact if they don’t have that information in terms of actual work experience,” Swain said. “You can call out class projects. If you have to work on a group together, maybe if you’re volunteering at your social organization, if you’re a part of a sorority or fraternity, things like that, there’s so much that you could do.”

You should be utilizing your desired job descriptions to make your resume a better fit for the role.

“The more relevant words you have on your resume, the better,” Swain said.

She advises job seekers to use job scans to see how much their resumes match the positions.

“Just copy and paste the resume and job description to see what the match is,” she said. “Your resume should have an 80% match to the job description.”

Swain also encourages the use of soft skills.

“You should have relevant technical skills and transferable soft skills on your resume,” she said. “I cannot stress that enough — soft skills honestly open up so many doors because we’re in a market where a lot of people want to pivot to different types of industries. So having time management, adaptability, writing, presenting, critical thinking and creativity, all of that will take you so much further for sure.”

Swain cautions against putting your full address on your resume as only city and state are needed in the digital age. She also said that a LinkedIn account and a professional email address are necessary.

“Resumes have changed a lot from what they were in the past, for sure,” Swain said.

Young professionals should have one-page resumes while more seasoned professionals may have two. Older professionals should focus on no more than 10-15 years of work experience and drop off items as they age, including irrelevant education and respective dates.

In terms of design, not too much has changed, Swain said. You should stay away from boxes, photos and unnecessary items that take up a lot of space.

“The one thing I will say is you have a lot of platforms like Canva, for instance, where they look nice, but that’s actually a big no-no. People should still honestly honor those traditional resumes because it’s more applicant-tracking-system-friendly,” she said.

While the market is tough, Swain wants job seekers to remain steadfast and hopeful.

“When you show up as your best self, that’s all that matters,” she said. “So, don’t be afraid to present your best self, don’t be afraid to put the time in to make sure you’re mitigating all those errors and adding those numbers to stand out because you should be proud when you submit your resume.”