Having your resume address what the employer will find of value is extremely important. Writing the stories in a way that shows your impact will interest potential employers. This is so much better than writing a list of job duties. It will make you of more interest relative to your competition.

You can’t write about your value when you do not know what it is for an employer. And worrying about formatting your resume will be a fool's errand if your content doesn’t address what that employer needs.

Hiring managers and recruiters will not infer you are qualified just by showing the amount of experience you have. That may have worked in the past, but you have to do better to be competitive in a modern job search.

The purpose of the resume (or CV) is to get you an interview. So, how many pages your resume should be will depend on the information needed to help the reader decide if they want to interview you. That is why there is no magic number.

Don’t just focus on hard skills in your resume. The reader, either a recruiter or hiring manager, wants to understand everything that you can bring of value. Smart recruiters and hiring managers know that while hard skills can get you an interview, your soft skills will often get you the job offer. So make sure you are emphasizing both on your resume.

Question. I am going to start a job search in January. Writing a resume seems very daunting. What suggestions do you have to make writing it easier?

While having a visually appealing resume does not guarantee that you will advance in the recruiting process, it certainly gives additional clues about your care in putting together this important document - it speaks to your professionalism and attention to detail.

If you do not have accomplishments listed on your resume, go back and add those relevant to a particular position you aspire to do. This will differentiate you from most of the applicants.

There are two readers for your resume. The software that reads your information, stores it, and matches it to the job opening, and the human reader - either in HR or the hiring manager. Your resume does have to appeal to both. What is optimal for one does not necessarily work the same for the other. Therefore, you do need to focus your attention on how your resume information is extracted. If crucial data cannot be read, then undoubtedly, your match to the job opening requirements will suffer.