4 Reasons Why Every Job Should Have a Customized Resume

Most law firms avoid posting jobs on Indeed or LinkedIn due to high costs. Instead, they publish them on their own websites, bar association pages, and niche legal boards. LawCrossing finds these hidden jobs, giving you access to exclusive opportunities. Sign up now!

published June 29, 2017

By Maria Laus, Author - LawCrossing

You keep hearing this advice on and on, “Always customize your resume to the job you are applying for” and wonder whether it is really something you need to pay too much attention. Why not have a super cool master CV/resume written for easy submission? Why waste time every time you are applying for a job to rewrite your CV/resume? Is this effort really worth the trouble? Experts say it is.

4 Reasons Why You Should Customize Your Resume

You aren't convinced yet? Check out the following few reasons which say that customization is definitely a great idea if you really want to land the job:

You Need to Get Your Resume Noticed - For every job advertised - thanks to the correlation of multiple online job boards - a recruiter can receive thousands of applications. Do you think they have time to read each one of them to find out which ones match the job specification best? Not at all.
United States
So what they do? They let the computer do the mundane job. The computer uses keywords to sift through the inundation of applications and will pick up those who have the right placement and number of keywords mentioned in the resume.
Looking for the Top 20-50 Matches - Sifting through applications is different from searching information on Google. Most recruiters would look at a cross-match of 2-4 criteria to get a maximum of 20-50 best-matched applicants. For this purpose, the resume has to be written from the perspective of the employer. Unless the resume is customized to the keywords that best represent and interpret the job specifications, there is no way that your carefully drafted application will not be noticed, let alone analyzed.
ATS (Applicants' Tracking Systems) Use Exact Matches -ATS cannot "catch" synonyms, alternate meaning, or implications. They only pick up the selected keywords that they were programmed to pick up. Their ability to identify keywords does not extend to various interpretations of any word. Hence, customization would definitely increase your chances exponentially.
Cover Letters Are Outside the ATS Purview - When the keyword search is performed, the ATS "looks" through ONLY resumes. These systems do not "read" cover letters. Hence, if you customized the cover letter while leaving the CV untouched, the proposed impact of the cover letter would be lost with the recruiter; the computer is not programmed to search resumes.

Want to Customize Your Resume? Go Here to Sign Up for Attorney Resume and Let Their Resume Experts Help You Today.

Gain an advantage in your legal job search. LawCrossing uncovers hidden positions that firms post on their own websites and industry-specific job boards—jobs that never appear on Indeed or LinkedIn. Don't miss out. Sign up now!