Putting together a killer resume is a not just a time-consuming activity, it is an essential one if you are serious about furthering your career by accessing and being considered for opportunities. Your resume is you marketing you, and there is no better person to do that.
As an individual who engages in a lot of freelance work, however, it may have become a particular concern how to adequately relate your freelance jobs on your resume so you succeed in both highlighting the array of activities you have been involved but also focusing on those aspects of your projects that are the most pertinent and impressive. Here’s a quick and easy guide how you can do just that.
Adapt it for relevancy
This is a piece of advice that most people don’t like hearing for one reason and one reason only: it makes putting together your resume a time-consuming task that is never done. That’s right, it is probable that you will never send out the same resume twice because the golden rule of putting together any resume is that is must be tailored specifically to the job you are applying for. And when it comes to freelance work, that becomes truer than ever.
“The biggest mistake individuals make with their resume is that they believe it is a one-time-only affair. Many think that a resume is a set-in-stone document that is never bent to the particulars of any one job or company, and this is a fatal mistake. Every job that you apply for deserves sufficient time and care be put into it, which means painstakingly tweaking your resume so it fits the specification details of that exact job,” advises Brendan Cumming, a freelancer at Paper Fellows.
Identify the freelancing jobs that most accurately reflect the job you are applying for and ensure they have pride of place on your resume and maximize the skills you possess in order to complete those tasks so well. That means other jobs may get cut completely if they can be deemed irrelevant. That’s how putting together a kickass resume works.
Be concise, and expand where necessary
Indelibly linked to the point of relevancy is your capacity to concisely confer your relevant jobs and emphasize the aspect of those job which truly connects to the position you are applying for. Most of your experience may be relevant, but can you concisely sum up most of that experience at the same time as bringing attention to what sets you apart for the role.
Contribution to earnings
Like any traditional resume, have you adequately stated your continuation to the earning power of the organization for which you freelanced? Scaling it down to simple dollar comparisons is often one of the most effective ways of proving your worth in a particular project, so these simple yet effective inclusions can really make or break your resume.
Crossover of projects
One aspect of freelance work that can truly confuse is its capacity to crisscross and overlap. This can be perplexing to someone who is trying to decipher your resume, so the best freelancer resumes will expertly confer the way in which projects dovetailed and highlight your considerable ability to juggle several balls at the same time, which is often truly representative of a great freelancer.
Presentation
Which finally leads us to the way in which you present your host of activities. Simply, use headings clearly and once again cut any information that you can deem irrelevant. State clearly your responsibility, the type of project, the dates from and to that you participated, and again any monetary value that can be assigned to your contribution.
HR professional Aimee Laurence is a passionate author on careers, the job
market, freelancing and entrepreneurship.
