Upgrade Your Resume with a Virtual Vocations Professional Resume Assessment

Updated January 2024

Think your resume isn’t critical to your success? Think again. Before you apply to job openings, submit your resume for a Virtual Vocations Professional Resume Assessment. A resume is a vital pillar for your career. It tells the story of your education, experience, and skills. It also demonstrates your ability to communicate meaningful information concisely and accurately. Your resume says a lot about you as a professional and is often the first impression you make on potential employers.

In the world of remote work, intelligently constructed written communication is essential. It’s less common to find remote work through face-to-face business networking, as most telecommuting positions are advertised via online job boards and recruiting websites. Though some employers receive employee referrals, many initial conversations for telecommuting jobs take place over email or an online portal. Thus, remote jobseekers must be skilled at marketing themselves through written communication, especially the resume.

Virtual Vocations Professional Resume Assessment Overview

Whether you’re a professional writer or language arts dropout, it’s always helpful to have a fresh pair of eyes review your resume. At Virtual Vocations, our team of certified resume writers provides a one-of-a-kind resume assessment service to help you land your next remote job. This service is more than simple proofreading or style advice. It’s a comprehensive analysis of your most critical career document and the overall impression it presents. Here are some of the major areas that the assessment team addresses:

Key Resume Components

Though resumes may change in appearance as new technologies and trends emerge, their purpose remains the same: to communicate your knowledge, skills, and experience and prove that you are a perfect fit for a job. Therefore, your resume must contain the essential components that employers use to evaluate your qualifications.

You probably already know to include your work experience and education, but you may ask questions like:

• Should I have a professional summary or a resume objective?
• Should I list my graduation dates and GPAs?
• How far back should I go when listing my work experience?
• Should I include my home address?
• Where should I list my certifications?

When you take advantage of our professional resume assessment, our experts help you determine which key resume components are appropriate for remote jobs in your industry. They also provide guidance on optimizing each section to make every word count. Since applicant tracking systems (ATS) are widely used, our team structures your resume to ensure the ATS reads it correctly.

Keywords

Whether you submit your resume through an ATS, upload it to a website, or send it by email, you want to include keywords specific to your industry and job category. Keywords are words and phrases that employers look for to determine whether your resume matches the job description and requirements. ATS software also uses keywords to scan your resume for specific qualifications. However, it’s easy to overdo it and use keywords incorrectly.

Our experts provide guidance on how to use keywords effectively throughout your resume. They can pinpoint sections that need more keywords to draw an employer’s attention and help your resume get filtered through an ATS. They also encourage you to tailor your targeted keywords to each job description. Though tailoring your resume may sound daunting, nothing attracts success more than good old fashion hard work. Lucky for you, our team is here to spot you during the heavy lifting and nudge you in the right direction.

Formatting and Style

The first thing that employers notice is how your resume looks overall. If the font is too small or if the content is visually unorganized, you might begin your job application on the wrong foot. Keep in mind, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for resume formatting and style. Therefore, you want to have a couple of versions tailored to different job categories and company types.

For example, if you’re applying for a job related to design and creativity, you may want to fancify your resume to show off your skills. A stunning, colorful document that flows well and represents your uniqueness may impress companies that seek innovators and out-of-the-box thinkers. However, if you’re applying for a job with standardized business tasks and processes, a simple and direct document may be more appropriate. Conventional organizations may also prefer a plainer resume devoid of color, social media icons, and nontraditional fonts.

Now, stylized resumes are great for uploading to recruiting sites and sending over email, but you still need a format-free version tailored to ATS software. Think about it: How many times have you copy and pasted individual lines of your resume to an employer’s online application portal? After creating a beautifully designed resume, it’s always discouraging to remove your stylized content and manually enter your information line by line. Fortunately, some ATS’s offer the option to upload your resume, and then the software fills in all the fields. However, you don’t want to upload a fancily formatted resume because the software might not decode the data correctly. Instead, you want to create a separate version from which the ATS can accurately extract information.

Our resume assessment experts will recommend specific formatting and style elements that make your resume stand out while adhering to industry standards. They also provide guidance on how to format your resume specifically for an ATS, which will save you time and frustration.

Spelling, Punctuation, and Consistency

Though formatting and style help make a good first impression, appearance only goes so far. If your award-winning resume design contains basic spelling and punctuation errors, looks don’t mean squat. No matter what type of job you’re seeking, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of writing, construct sentences correctly, and maintain consistency throughout a document. For example, you want to maintain an active voice and use consistent verb tense, tone, and capitalization. You also want to write clearly and concisely to communicate your qualifications within the recommended page limit.

Our professional resume assessment experts will identify glaring spelling and punctuation issues; however, make sure you run a spelling and grammar check before submitting. It’s also helpful to read your content aloud to make sure it sounds right and catch anything your spellchecker may have missed. Our team may also point out major inconsistencies in the way you describe your work achievements and responsibilities. Even if you’re an expert writer, a second opinion is always helpful to sharpen your document.

Gaps in Employment, Education, or Skills

If you are rejoining the workforce or transitioning to a new industry, your resume may contain gaps in employment, education, or skills. Though employers may be understanding and willing to accommodate your individual needs, they still need straightforward evidence that you’re fit for the job. There’s no need to worry, however. Your past life choices and circumstances don’t dictate your future success. Upon request, our pros can offer tips for filling in the gaps without embellishing or sounding inexperienced.

Common Resume Mistakes

From misspellings to vague phrases and disorganized structure — we’ve seen it all. Many job applicants make the same mistakes over and over, and they wonder why they can’t land their dream job. Employers don’t intentionally look for faux pas, but it’s hard not to notice them and subsequently question the integrity of the applicants. For example, when employers catch multiple inconsistencies in a resume, they may think:

• Is this person careless? They didn’t seem to proofread their application thoroughly.
• Is this person unreliable? Will they perform this way when they work for me?
• Is this person negligent? Will they overlook essential details while working with my team?

Remember, your resume represents who you are as a professional. A well-constructed resume can be your meal ticket, but a sloppy one with lots of mistakes can leave you hungry and out of work. Our experts can quickly identify where you’ve committed a common resume no-no and provide insight and resources to help you amend the error. The more you know what not to do, the closer you are to creating a winning resume.

Ready to Launch Your Telecommuting Career?

If you’re looking at your resume with uncertain eyes, it’s probably time to summon the pros. Our Professional Resume Assessment service is free when you upgrade from a free to premium subscription. Simply sign up for a Virtual Vocations membership, navigate to Additional Services, and add the Professional Resume Assessment to your cart. Once you activate the service, upload your document to the Resume Assessment section in your account. In two to three business days, you’ll receive a write-up from one of our resume experts with tons of information to help you succeed.

Not sure whether a professional assessment is valuable? Consider how badly you want your next big job and how important it is to find a 100% fully remote position. Think about all the benefits of working from home and the type of lifestyle remote work provides. If achieving your career goals is crucial for living your preferred lifestyle, then it’s worth investing in yourself and getting additional help from our specialists.

Are you interested in trying Virtual Vocations’ professional resume assessment service? Connect with Virtual Vocations on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube to share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you!