Should you create a custom resume for each application

Before diving into the pros and cons of doing this time intensive endevour we should first cover this — time. When you first begin your job search you probably have a few companies you’d love to work for, or roles that you know are a perfect fit. These may be great opportunities to create a custom resume for. A custom resume is pulling elements from the job description and incorporating them into your experience at school, clubs, internships, or other jobs. Additionally, at larger companies that have a robot sort through the resume and chopping 80% of applications based on keywords used — this could be a great tactic to make the first cut. But let’s take the more probable scenario where these top 10 roles and companies might not book an interview. Creating custom resumes for each application is largely unscalable and unadvised. Focus on creating one resume that shows off your skills best, with general keywords for the positions you’re looking for and use that for most applications. And when jobs pop up that are perfect, you can create one-off custom resume for those as they arise. Now let’s dive in for a second time.

Pros

Standing out

A job description may require experience with a specific design tool or maybe a specific social platform, but with a general resume you may experience in exactly what they’re looking for but you failed to mention it. Which ulimatly leads to being overlooked for the intial interview. Having the exact asks that the employer is looking for in your resume gives you the best shot at landing into the interview pool. If any employer asks for TikTok marketing skills and you have two candidates with Facebook marketing experience vs. TikTok marketing experience you can see how simple the decision making will be.

In theory, you’ll have less applications to land interviews

Although this is a much more time consuming approach to applying for roles, you will certainly have a much higher conversion rate per application. But there is a trade off that you’ll need to think about. You could still land the interview, with another 25 with a regular resume. Therefore, as we mentioned above only use this tactic for your favorite companies and role.

You’ll also have less interviews to prepare which means the interviews that you do have, you’ll be able to prepare the most for. But beware of putting all of your eggs in one basket, because at the end of the day there is always someone who gets cut in even the final round of interviews.

Get past ATS

Get past the bots that solely look at keywords in your resume before moving your application onto a recruiters desk where they’ll spend 10 seconds before rendering a decision on if a hiring manager should book the initial call.

Cons

Time

The more interviews you book, the more chances you have to land a job. It’s simple math. Many college students are busy spraying their resumes across all roles, job boards, and platforms to land interviews. Recruiters spend little to no time on your resume, therefore a couple of hours of work could be totally thrown out the window. This can be a tough pill to swallow, but the recruitment process is not fair. You could build the perfect resume, with everything they asked for, and for any number of outside factors an interview won’t be booked. Don’t spend too much time on one application unless it’s your top 5 pick.

Opportunity cost

Using one resume to apply to more roles will give you more exposure. More opportunities to get your resume seen. These will lead to more interview which will increase your experience, learnings, and professionalism in them. Book more interviews, even if you’re unsure it a job you want. Sometime you learn about a company you’ve never heard of, but find the culture environment, or the boss is the perfect fit. Maybe you get an offer in 2 weeks rather than 5 months. Explore more, and sharpen your interview skills rather than being hyper focused on getting one interview at one particular company.

Called out

Make sure then when using the custom resume route you don’t put things on your resume that you don’t know, have researched, or have experience in. Having expert in X on your resume may help you land the interview, but if in the interview it is exposed that you have little to no knowledge on this topic it could reflect poorly on you. Be honest with your skills, where they are at, and show that although you may not have experience in X you’re skills in Y will be able to carry over to X and accelerate the learning curve.