How to Make An Impressive Resume for FREE (in 2024)

Hey folks, and welcome back to my channel. My name is Erin McGough. I'm a filmmaker and career educator living in New York, and today we're going to remake your resume. Oh wait, are you the person looking to supercharge your resume and get it to the top of any pile to get an interview at any company you want? I'm Erin, it's nice to meet you. Who am I? Well, my name is Erin, and I've helped literally millions of people redo their resumes and snag their dream jobs. And today I'm ready to spill all my secrets with you. Today we are going to be redoing your resume using Google Docs for exactly zero dollars. This is all free, so if you are enjoying this video so far, hit that subscribe button and join the community. Let's get something clear here, okay? Redesigning your resume isn't like the most fun thing. Like, I think it's fun. Like, I get it if you don't, if this isn't like a fun pastime for you, but I'm proud of you for taking the time out of your day to do this because you could be doing something way more fun right now, but you're not. You're hanging out with me, so thanks. So here's the thing. I've designed a system that allows you to make the highest quality resume in the shortest amount of time. You're busy, okay? You don't have time to spend hours and hours and hours and days and months and years and light years redoing your resume. So I'm not gonna waste any more time blabbering along. Let's get into it. First of all, let's get clear what a resume is not. A resume is not a list of everything you've ever done in your life. Get out of here with those three to four page resumes. I once saw a six page resume and the last page was just blank. Do we get our resumes back or do you keep them? Because I only have the one and I have a chili recipe on the back that I really wanna keep. The amount of resumes I've seen with no names on them, no one is looking at your long resume, okay? We gotta keep it concise. One page is preferred, two pages in special circumstances. And if you're gonna make a two page resume, you better be sure that nothing important is on that second page because they will most likely not look at it. Number two, a resume is not an opportunity to showcase your personality or design skills. The average recruiter spends about seven seconds just skimming your resume. So the purpose of a resume is to convey the most amount of relevant information in the shortest amount of time. And then people inevitably say, well, Erin, I'm working in a creative field. Shouldn't I showcase my creativity through my resume? No, you shouldn't. That's what your portfolio is for. Every professional graphic designer I know has the most simplistic, minimal resume I've ever seen because they are professionals and they know that the function of a resume is to convey a lot of information in a short amount of time. So any distractions from that hurt the function of the resume. What did Dita Roms, the famous designer, say? Good design is as little design as possible. That is the mentality we are going to have. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the infamous ATS. ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. ATS is an umbrella name for a lot of different softwares that companies use to sift through and organize applicants. So when a company puts up a job listing on Indeed and they get 10,000 applicants, the ATS that they pay for, the software that they pay for, will go through and either organize or assign value or weed out or whatever different applicants that it thinks are relevant or irrelevant. Now, the problem is that a lot of ATS systems are kind of dumb. Now, if you are filling out online applications, there is a very, very good chance that your resume is going to get sucked into an ATS vacuum and you need to make sure that it is what we call ATS-friendly. That means if you submit your resume as a JPEG, it's not gonna like that. It's gonna be like, I can't read JPEG, you're rejected. Even if you are a great candidate, it's gonna be like, I don't like this, I can't read this. You need to make sure that it's ATS-friendly because these ATS systems are notoriously a little dumb. So how do we do that? We keep our resume simple. We keep the formatting simple. We make them nice and boring. No funky graphics, no funky fonts, no funky formatting, no funky pictures. You just gotta kiss. Keep it simple, silly. Step one, the brain dump. So before we actually go into making our resume, we're gonna do one thing really quick that's going to save you so much time and it's going to help you make much stronger and more effective resumes. I call it the brain dump. We are going to open a blank document and write down everything we've ever done professionally. This is a living document, so it's something that you are going to keep updating for the rest of your life. So you wanna keep it somewhere safe. I suggest just opening up a Google Doc and just having it in the cloud. It doesn't need to be pretty. It doesn't need to be formatted any type of way. It's just for you. So start with your education. Where did you go to high school, college? What were you involved in? Were you in any clubs or associations? What were some of your relevant courses, your GPA? What towns were they in? Did you get any certifications or any registrations? Did you take any online courses? Anytime you have learned anything, add it to this section. Then you're gonna go into professional experience. Name every single company you've ever worked for from babysitting and cutting lawns in high school to internships and apprenticeships, temp work, contract work, all the way up to part-time and full-time work. And then if you can, write five to 10 bullet points for each section and a pro tip for writing bullet points because it is just so hard and I'm always trying to find ways to make it easier for y'all. Go to the job description for a job that's similar, that's hiring right now. So for example, if I worked as a video editor for an advertising agency, I would go to like Indeed or ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn and look for a company that's currently hiring that and look at the bullet points for what they're looking for in that role. And that's a good place to kind of gain inspiration for what to write as your bullet points, if that makes any sense. And then you can always use, you know, ChatGBT. You can always look at other resume examples. There's another AI system called pi.ai that I also really love. And lastly, you wanna add in all the extras. So all the skills you know, literally list every single software you know, even like Outlook, Gmail, Mac iOS, Microsoft, collaboration, teamwork, emotional intelligence. You wanna add in your volunteer work, any charity nonprofit you've ever volunteered with. Places you've traveled, languages you speak is huge. Relevant hobbies, your hard and your soft skills. So hard skills are technical skills, like things that you had to be taught how to do. And soft skills are things that more have to do with your personality and your character and who you are as a professional. So for example, a hard skill is like Excel, proficient at Microsoft Excel. But a soft skill is like leadership, collaborative, teamwork. This is your opportunity to lay everything out on the table. It's gonna feel great. Step two is your resume template. Okay, now we can open up a nice blank resume template and just start from scratch. Now, in case you didn't know this, you need to tailor your resume for every single job that you apply to. I know what you're thinking. Erin, I don't have time to make a brand new resume for every single job. That's ridiculous. I have two things to say to that, Mr. Sir, Madam. Number one, you're not making a brand new resume from scratch. All I'm asking you to do is tailor it for that role. That can mean just swapping out a few words and we'll get to that soon. Second, tailoring your resume is not a waste of time. It is going to save you so much time down the road because it's gonna help you get a job quicker. Applying to random jobs you find online with the same generic resume is a fantastic way to not get an interview. Ask any recruiter. They hate getting a generic resume that they obviously can tell was not tailored for the role. An immediate throwaway. Okay, okay, this is an illustration I like to use to help just like drill this in. So imagine it's a hot summer day and all you want is a crisp, cold, fresh Coca-Cola. Like one of those like Mexican Coca-Colas, you know, like the really, really good ones. And so two waiters come up to you. One has a silver platter with a white handkerchief and just one crisp, cold Coca-Cola, Mexican Coca-Cola in a glass. Here you go. The other waiter comes up to you and he also has a silver platter with a nice white cloth. But on that platter, he has a couple sprites and some orange juice. I think there's a few Pepsis. Is there a Fanta on there? Oh, and then in the back, I think he has a, there's a Coca-Cola in a glass, but I can't really tell. Yep, that's a Coca-Cola. Which platter are you gonna reach for? The one showing you exactly what you want. That's what tailoring your resume is doing. When you add other details that aren't relevant, that's not what they're looking for. It's just a distraction. It's wasting their time. You need to show these recruiters who are usually just scanning resumes and just skimming, looking for keywords. You just need to show them exactly what they're looking for very clearly. For your convenience, I've broken it down into three parts. Professional resume, athletic and special skills resume, and Dwight Schrute trivia. Not tailoring your resume is a waste of your own time and it's working hard and not working smart. I digress. End scene. I'm gonna get off my high horse here. Get down from my soapbox. Anyway, so it's time to pick out your resume template. If you're in a more conservative industry, you know, like finance or law, you might wanna go with a more conservative template. But if you're in another industry like creative or tech, you can usually get away with a more design-forward template. But honestly, as long as it's simple and legible and prioritizes readability over everything, you can't go wrong. And of course, I'm gonna link to some of my favorite resume templates down in the description, so go check them out down there. On to part three, which is sections. Okay, so resumes are pretty subjective for the most part, but there are five sections that you should have on every single resume no matter what. They are expecting to see these sections. Number one is your name, number two is your contact information, number three is your relevant past experience, number four is your education, and number five are your skills. You can also add additional sections if you want, like awards, volunteer experience, languages is a big one. They're not necessarily required like the other sections, but they're great to have. And there's one additional section on your resume that I highly, highly recommend that you have. Studies show that if you have this one section on your resume and you do it right, it will supercharge your chances of getting the interview and the job. What is this section? A professional summary. I am a huge fan of professional summaries. I mean, the research doesn't lie. Recruiters love a well-written professional summary. Also, they are a great life hack because if you don't have the time to go through and tailor your entire resume, you can just tailor your little summary at the top and they will love it. I love it! They are so incredibly powerful, especially in this age of social media where we are so used to seeing people distill down their entire beings into this little bio. If it's on Instagram, they have a little bio. If it's on Hinge, they just, we're so used to seeing people just summarize themselves. So a professional summary is a fantastic way to just say right to the recruiter or the department head or the hiring manager, I am who you are looking for. Now, if you wanna know how to write the most incredible professional summary, I have a template for you. No matter who you are, just starting out, switching careers, or you've been doing it for decades, go watch this video because I have a template for you that walks you through exactly how to do it. I get messages all the time from people saying, Erin, I did it! I integrated the summary and I'm getting all these interviews now. I can't keep up. And I'm just telling you, you got to trust me. You gotta listen to Erin. You gotta listen to me. I know what I'm talking about. Go watch this video, save it for later. Do what you gotta do. And just know if you've read a professional summary on your resume, I like you. Okay, so generally on your resume, you wanna list things out from most important to least important. So if you're applying for a role where your education is like super duper duper important, you can shift that to the top of the page. But if you're just normal like the rest of us, typically it's best to go with your name, contact info, relevant past experience, education skills. That is the conventional format. However, there is another resume format that I am a huge fan of and that I personally use, and it is called a functional resume. So a chronological resume is when you list out your experience from oldest to most recent. But a functional resume is a skills forward resume. So you have your name and contact information the same at the top, but then instead of having your relevant experience front and center, you have your skills front and center. And then underneath that, you have your relevant experience, education, whatever else. What I love about functional resumes is that they're great for people who have a big gap in their career and they don't wanna draw so much attention to like their timeline, or people who are changing careers and you can really highlight your skills that you have as opposed to like your past experience, or for people like me who have technical skills and those technical skills are the most important aspect of getting an interview. So for example, me, I'm a video editor, knowing Premiere, knowing DaVinci, knowing Audition, knowing After Effects, all these softwares is paramount. So I always list my skills right there at the top just so the recruiter knows, okay, this person knows what they're doing. They have their name, contact information, professional summary, skills, and then companies I worked for at the bottom. Now, if you're in an industry where they care about your career arc and what companies you've worked for, maybe like business or consulting or finance, then you might wanna do a chronological resume. But if they're really just hiring you for your skills, I love a good functional resume. They are beautiful. Part four is keywords. So after we've completed our brain dump, picked out our template, organized our sections, it's time to start filling out your resume. So again, keywords are so, so important because your resume is first going to be seen by probably like a hiring manager or recruiter. So not somebody who is super, super familiar with your job, but they're given a job description and a bunch of keywords to look for, and they're looking at your resume, and they're just scanning for those keywords. So you wanna make sure that your resume reflects the job description as much as possible. So something that I like to do is I like to take the job description and just copy and paste it into my resume document that I'm working in, and just keep it in mind as I'm writing my bullet points. You could even throw the job description into something like ChattyBT, and then write a prompt like I'm applying for this role, and then write about your previous experience, and then say, can you write some bullet points that reflect the keywords in this job description. Another thing with these bullet points is that you're going to quantify as much as possible. I don't know what it is about humans, but they love numbers, we love statistics, we gravitate towards numbers, and they really simplify things. So instead of saying, oh, I edited videos for this brand, I would say, edited three to five videos weekly. You know, just add in like a little juice. And it doesn't have to be exact, okay? The numbers, nobody's gonna arrest you if the numbers are a couple digits off. Just do your best. So for example, if I'm looking at this job description and it says that I need to be able to work with this team, and here are the skills I need to know, you know, Adobe, Dropbox, then I want to make sure that all of those words are in my resume at least once, so that when their eyeballs are skimming, they see all those keywords light up, and they're like, this is the person, let's just give them the offer now, let's double it, double it for them. Give them all of our money, sell the business with them. Something to keep in mind is that recruiters, hiring managers, whoever is reviewing your resume, is going to spend most of their few seconds that they're skimming it in the top left corner of your resume. They're gonna kind of do a little scan. So you want to make sure that the top left quadrant of your resume has some of those keywords, some of those things to grip them and make them think, okay, I should read the rest of this resume. That's all you're trying to get them to do, is just say, okay, I should spend a few more seconds on this resume. Put them in the yes file. So once you feel like you've filled out the content of your resume and you're feeling pretty good about it, you got numbers in there, it's nice and juicy and specific, you got keywords, it's looking fire. I would highly recommend downloading the plugin Grammarly or using Spellcheck to proofread the schnap out of that resume. I am a typo queen and I go nowhere without my Grammarly now. I love it so much, it saves my booty all day. By the way, I do free resume reviews on Instagram, so follow me there for the details. I will get a resume and it'll have a typo on it. And every single time I see a resume with a typo, and if I find a typo, that means it's bad, because I'm bad at finding typos. They almost always have detail oriented in their skill section. Y'all, if you have detail oriented in your skill section and you have errors on your resume, like, immediately know. Immediately know. ♪ Cause I don't care. ♪ Immediately know. So get Grammarly, use Spellcheck, get your detail oriented friend, read your resume backwards, do what you have to do to make sure there are no inconsistencies or errors. Inconsistencies are another big thing. You want to make sure that all of your bullet points are using the same tense. You want to make sure you're not using any pronouns. You don't want to say, like, I edited videos. You just want to say, like, edited videos. It's just all these little professional etiquette things with resumes that we all follow for some reason. And also, if you do complete your resume and you're like, this is looking, this is looking pretty good, Erin. I like this resume. There is a website called Jobscan, where you can throw your resume in and then you copy and paste the job description and you plop that in as well. And it's kind of like a generic ATS scanner. So it will scan your resume, scan the job description, and then it will spit out, like, a score. Like, you got a B minus. Make it better. Again, it's not like, they're not, all ATSs are not all the same, but it's just kind of a fun thing to do. It's, like, free, I think, for your first, like, five resumes or something. I'll put a link to Jobscan down in the description too. Wow, lots of links in the description today. So I could talk about resumes all night, all week, all month, but I need to stop myself here. I mean, at the end of the day, I think resumes are kind of dumb because they discriminate against people who don't know how to design and they don't know how to write. Or they just don't know how to make them and nobody ever taught them. So then they pay $800 for a resume writer to write the worst resume ever and they get entirely screwed over. Instead, you screwed me? No. True story. I get resumes all the time from people who paid for these fancy resume writers. And guys, just don't waste your money, okay? This is a free video. All the templates down there are free. ChatGBT is free. All these tools are available for free to you to be able to make your own resume, to tailor it yourself for free, and get the job you want. So if you found this video useful, please throw in a like, subscribe, introduce yourself down in the comments. I'd love to meet you. Join the community. Follow me on Instagram, TikTok. Sign up for my newsletter. And remember, you got this and I'll see you next time.