It is a tough moment for the labor market.
Businesses are hiring at one of the slowest paces in the last 10 years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and as many as 7.2 million people are unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
If you’re currently looking for work, experts recommend tapping into your network as much as possible and celebrating the small wins — even if they’re as small as updating your resume. And, in fact, the job search process can be a good way to update your resume, which might in turn help you land a job.
Here’s how.
Even ‘almost identical’ roles have ‘nuance’
One thing the job search lets you do is ensure you’re using the most relevant language.
“Even if you’re applying for almost identical types of roles, there’s nuance there,” says Octavia Goredema, career coach and author of “PREP, PUSH, PIVOT.” When you’re reading the descriptions of the jobs you apply to, you’ll notice “there might be different measures for success and there might be different words that are used to describe some core functions,” she says.
For the jobs you’re interested in, update your resume to include their language, to the extent that it reflects your experience. “What you’re trying to do is align who you are, what you do best, and the experience you have with what your next employer is looking for,” she says.
With the labor market in a state of flux as companies implement AI usage, matching what you see on job descriptions can also help ensure you’re using the most “up-to-date language,” says Julie Bauke, founder of career coach company The Bauke Group.
‘Something you did two years ago’ could be relevant
Your job search can also help to remind you of what you haven’t included in your resume.
“You might think that something you did two years ago is completely irrelevant,” says Bauke. “But it may be really of value today.” Reading those job descriptions can give you a sense of what employers are looking for, including skills and accomplishments you’ve forgotten about yourself.
If you come across something a company wants to see in their candidates in the “responsibilities” or “qualifications” sections, for example, that you’ve done and that you have yet to highlight, add it to your resume. Give examples of how you’ve accomplished that particular task in a bullet under the job title or in your summary with numerical evidence of success (“exceeded sales goal by 30%,” for example).
“Even if you don’t get an offer from a role that you really wanted,” says Goredema, go back and look at what that employer was looking for and see if there’s anything “that you would add to your resume that you think would make you stand out even more in the future?”