The MicroTrain Blog

Master vs. Custom Resume

Your resume is such a complicated document that, as soon as you finish the first draft, it’s tempting to just breathe a sigh of relief and start sending it in to employers.

That’d be a big mistake.

If you’re serious about your job search, you should customize your resume every time you apply for a new job. In doing so, you can both accentuate your compatibility with the position and increase your chances of getting past the Applicant Tracking System software many employers use to filter out “incompatible” applications.

The new resume builder on the TheProfessional.me guides you through the process of creating a master resume, with all of your professional experience, skills and education, and then customizing that resume for specific job applications.

Master Resume

The first thing you’ll need to do is create your master resume.

Your master resume is the toolbox from which you will construct and customize later resumes. It contains your entire work and education history from your first day on the job to the present day. Don’t worry if some of the elements don’t seem particularly relevant. You just want to collect your entire job history in one place, so you’ll be able to find it quickly when you need it.

When you finish with your master resume, you might be surprised by its length. This shouldn’t concern you, though, because employers should never actually see your master resume. To apply for a specific job, you need to create a custom resume.

Custom Resumes

Custom resumes are tailored to specific job leads. They contain only the skills, experience, and education that are relevant to that specific job, and even go so far as to incorporate key words and phrases from the job post. You should customize your resume every time you apply for a new job.

TheProfessional.me makes it easy to create a custom resume. While viewing a specific job, click the Create a Custom Resume button to jump into the custom resume builder where you’ll see both your master resume and job lead on one page. From there you can customize your master resume by selecting and/or changing any of the components of your resume.

At this point it’s essential to make sure that every piece of information on your custom resume is relevant to the job posting. If you don’t know why a piece of information is on your resume or how it will help you get the job, chances are you should remove it.

When you finish tailoring your custom resume to the job posting, all you have to do is download it and attach it to your application. Just make sure to proofread your resume a few times and even have a friend or two look it over before you send it in. 

Click here to start building your master resume now!

Sitting for a job interview can be one of the most stressful parts of your job-seeking experience. Unfortunately, when you’re nervous about your performance, how you look and what to say. You’ll often find yourself giving awkward, rambling responses that only make you sound more nervous and less competent.

It’s time to break the cycle of interview anxiety.

When you learn to control your responses, you learn to control the interview. The good news is that it’s easy to learn this control. All it takes is some forethought and a little something we call the STAR Method.

The STAR Method is more than just an easy way to prepare for interview questions. It’s a way of story-telling that can be used for anything from your interview, to elevator pitches, blog posts and even talking with your friends and family. Any time you want to concisely describe a situation, just follow the STAR Method below.

Situation: What was the background of the situation? Keep this short and sweet: 1-2 sentences. This is where most people tend to ramble and never get to the rest of the story.

Task: What did you need to accomplish? Think of this as the goal of the project.

Action: What steps did you take to achieve those goals? Be very organized and list the steps you took in chronological order explaining briefly why you made those decisions.

Results: What was the outcome of your actions? This is the part almost everyone skips but it is the MOST important part of the story. It tells how you were successful and that you will be successful in the job you are interviewing for.

For example:

I had a software conversion project I managed at Acme Company last year. We were moving from an AS400 system to SAP and the company had 5 different locations and several departments which would be affected so it was a high-priority complex project.

I needed to plan and implement the conversion with as little down time as possible, within budget, and to the satisfaction of all of the users.

I used the PMBOK method to gather research about what we needed the new program to do, interviewed and surveyed current users, put together two teams of staff: one to make the conversion and one to train the staff. Then I arranged training sessions for staff and rolled out a beta version and fixed the bugs. Then we went live over a weekend.

We ended up under budget, on time and with only 10% of users submitting tickets in the following month. I can do the same thing for you with this project.

And that’s all there is to it. Take some time to complete our Interview Trainer. commit the STAR Method to memory. Its real value is not in the responses that you prepare, but in teaching you the ability to think on your feet and formulate coherent and concise responses to questions on the go.