---
title: 'Tips for Writing a Better Resume (From a Recruiter''s Perspective)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=R3abknwWX7k'
video_id: 'R3abknwWX7k'
date: 2026-08-18
duration_sec: 514
channel: 'A Life After Layoff'
---

# Tips for Writing a Better Resume (From a Recruiter's Perspective)

> Source: [Tips for Writing a Better Resume (From a Recruiter's Perspective)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=R3abknwWX7k)

## Summary

This video offers resume writing advice from a recruiter's perspective, emphasizing the importance of tailoring resumes to pass applicant tracking systems (ATS) and capture a recruiter's attention within seconds. The speaker shares practical tips to avoid common pitfalls and improve the chances of landing an interview.

### Key Points

- **Recruiter's Perspective on Resumes** [00:01] — The speaker reviews many resumes and notes that many need improvement. The video aims to share tips to help viewers' resumes not 'suck' and put their best foot forward.
- **The Litmus Test for a Resume** [00:42] — There is no single right way to write a resume; the key is whether it gets the desired results. The speaker's approach is based on corporate experience and feedback from hiring managers who often give resumes a five-second glance.
- **Avoid Outdated Graphic Templates** [01:35] — Stop using templates designed by graphic designers, often found on sites like Canva, which include graphics and charts. These distract from the resume's purpose. Instead, use simple, one-column templates from Microsoft Word with clean fonts and basic colors like blue or black.
- **Make Contact Information Vertical** [03:05] — Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) often fail to parse horizontal contact information. Making it vertical ensures cleaner parsing and reduces manual data entry. If the ATS doesn't parse your details correctly, your resume is likely not ATS-compliant.
- **Profile, Don't Summarize** [03:47] — Instead of writing a resume as a summary of all career accomplishments, profile for a specific role. Deliver exactly what the employer is looking for, focusing on relevant skills and experiences rather than everything you've done.
- **Customize Your Resume** [04:24] — Customization is crucial, especially for competitive remote roles. The job market is fierce, and customizing your resume for each application is a competitive advantage. Avoid being lazy; the market is not like 2018.
- **Be Concise, Avoid Wordiness** [05:08] — Long blocks of text are hard to scan and often skipped. Be selective with words and layout. Use clear, common language instead of proprietary jargon that only your current company understands.
- **Remove Generic Fluffy Terms** [06:44] — Phrases like 'team player' or 'great communication skills' make recruiters roll their eyes. These competencies are assessed in interviews, not on the resume. Focus on actionable terms and concepts relevant to the job.
- **Be Willing to Change** [07:22] — If your resume isn't working, redo it. Repeating the same approach and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. If you're getting rejected at the application stage, your resume likely isn't conveying your fit clearly.

### Conclusion

The video concludes by encouraging viewers to plan, do, check, and adjust their resumes. If the resume isn't getting results, make changes and try different versions. The speaker also promotes their 'Resume Rocket Fuel' course for more detailed guidance.

## Transcript

look at a lot of résumés and I do a lot of résumé reviews. And one thing is perfectly clear. Some of y'all need some help. And in this video, I'm going to share some rum writing tips that will help your resume not suck.
with you some rumé writing tips so that you can put your best foot forward and interviews. Now I want to preface this by stating that there's no singular lots of different approaches and a lot of them are very valid and the litmus
test here is is your resume getting the results that you want? If it is then stick with what works best for you. My approach comes from a corporate and look at résumés very quickly. We usually give you a five-second glance,
but also how hiring managers have given me feedback on how they screen resumes themselves. And so the feedback and the tips that I teach are from that way is the only way that you can approach it. However, I do want to give
you some tips that can help you improve your presentation because ultimately you capture the attention of the person who is screening the resume and making sure that first round interview. And I also want to point out that the tips that I'm
sharing today come directly from my resume rocket course, which teaches you exactly how to write a resume from a recruiter's perspective. So, if you need developing and crafting the right resume for you, you may want to consider that
do is stop using outdated templates designed by graphic designers. I see these templates very frequently on places like canva.com, but also a lot of these big industry réé hubs where you can go in, pay some money to download a
resume that has a bunch of graphics, charts, a bunch of cute presentation. because they end up distracting from the initial purpose, which is for us to find what it is that we're looking for in a very quick and concise manner. So,
Microsoft Word, downloading a very simple template, and working with that. If you want a battle tested recruiter approved RSé template, I also provide one with RSé rocket fuel, and I've also made it available as a standalone. So,
you're choosing a template, go with one that has one column. Avoid any of the bright and flashy colors and graphics. Make sure that the fonts are very clean and easy to read. I would stick the basic colors, maybe blue, blacks, dark
green, etc. But I wouldn't go very flashy here. For most of us, a resume should be relatively boring in that regard. The only exception here is if you're a graphic designer or somebody in a creative field where you might want to
opt for a more creative approach to your resume because that's probably expected in that role. But if you're a graphic designer, you probably don't want to be using a template designed by another graphic designer is probably not the
templates designed by graphic designers often aren't very effective is because they're designed by people who don't know how applicant tracking systems work and how they parse résumés. To that end, here's another tip. Stop making your
contact information horizontal. You want to make it vertical because the ATS systems typically do not read horizontal and parse it very well. You want to go information more cleanly and puts it into the right fields. And here's a
little litmus test there. If you find when you're applying for jobs that the applicant tracking system is not parsing your name, your phone number, your concise way and you have to do a lot of manual data entry, you probably don't
have an ATS compliant resume. Now, your contact information isn't the reason why you aren't going to get contacted in most cases, but it's just a little speed up your applications. The next thing I would implore you to do is to
stop writing your resume as a summary of everything that you've ever accomplished in your career. Start thinking about profiling. And I know that we look at profiling with a negative context. But the idea of profiling here is that
instead of summarizing and hoping that the employer sees something that they like that we're profiling for a specific role and we're delivering exactly what the employer is looking for. It's a much more effective approach to writing
résumés. So stop focusing on all the stuff that you've accomplished in your career that probably isn't relevant to the hiring teams and start focusing on about. The next thing is is going to be something that's going to trigger some
people, but it's to stop being so lazy about your customization. Customization of your resume is a very crucially important step, especially in today's job market and in particular those coveted remote roles because you may be
looking for them, but so is everybody else. And the competition is fierce. So you have to do something to stand out. And customizing, while it might seem uncomfortable, is something that you will have to get in the habit of doing.
You can't keep on approaching your job search like it's 2018. The market is because everybody else is going to be lazy and not customize their resume, a competitive advantage and get that edge to get the phone call while they're
getting rejected. And while you're at it, stop being so damn wordy with your resumes. Some of the résumés that I see are blocks of text that are so long that you're trying to scan through it. Think of when you go onto a forum or a
Facebook post or something and people leave a huge block of text in a comment. How many of you actually get through it and read it? Whereas, when people format it and make it look nice and concise and short, it's much more easy to scan.
Recruiters and hiring managers are probably going to skip over your resume if you hit them with a massive block of text. So, try to be more concise. Try to be very selective with the words that you choose and how it lays out on the
some of these extra words is to stop using proprietary language that the only people who know what it is are you and maybe your boss and your current co-workers. Often times we feel the need
to put in all this proprietary information, titles, project names, division names, product types, etc. that are only unique and only known by the company that you work for. Everybody else in the open market has no clue what
they are. And you're spending all this time trying to basically word salad your way into I don't know if it's to try to impress us or what it is, but you want to try to be concise here. So, I always recommend to try to boil down the
concepts that you're trying to convey in as clear a language in as common a language as possible for the industry that you're applying to. Another thing that you can do to try to declutter your resume is to remove the generic fluffy
terminology. This stuff makes just about every recruiter and hiring manager roll their eyes when you say things like, "I'm a team player," or, "I have great if that's a really important competency to the hiring teams, we're going to
assess that in an interview anyway. Your resume is probably not going to show it in a way that we would need to to assess your fit. Instead, I would focus on more actionable terms and concepts in your resume as they relate to the job that
here is not to have the most words on your resume or try to impress people with an elaborate vocabulary. It's to convey a clear and concise fit for the job that you're applying to with again the end goal of trying to get your name
interview process. And the final tip that I'd like to convey in this video is to stop being so stubborn. If your resume isn't working, redo it. But as over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of
frustrated in your job search and you're getting rejected repeatedly at the application level, something tells me that your resume is not working for you. And this is especially true if you're somebody that has a very clear fit for
would be remiss without saying that we our fit for the jobs that we're applying to. While we may feel we're a good fit, we have to take a very close look at the job posting and say, "Do I truly stack
up?" Because when they have a thousand other candidates, they probably are. So, make sure that your resume is clearly conveying the fit so that you can give that interview process. Anyway, hopefully you found these tips to be
helpful the next time you're writing a resume. And remember, plan, do, check, and adjust. If your resume is not getting you the results that you want, make some changes, mix it up a little bit, try a different version. If you're
encourage you to check out Ré Rocket Fuel. Anyway, happy job hunting. Appreciate you watching. We'll see you on the next one.