Should You Change Your Resume for Every Job?

When it comes time to send your resume out on Indeed or to a HR portal online, it’s a good idea to tailor your resume to the job.

But should you chance your resume completely for every job you apply to? Of course not, but that’s not to say you should not make small changes to your resume when it comes time to submit it to a company.

It’s a good idea to review your resume before you submit it because you get only one chance when it comes to having your resume reviewed. Recruiters and certainly HR people are not going to pour over your resume and try and find ways that you can fit into the company.

You are not dealing with job counselors, you are dealing with people who need to fill open job spots and these people are not incentivized to try and make a square peg fit into a round hole.

So, if you’re resume isn’t exactly what the recruiters and human resources hiring team is looking for, then you’re going to get passed over.

Therefore it is helpful to tailor your resume slightly to each job you apply for as long as the jobs are different in nature. We’ll cover this more in slightly more details below. It is important to know that you don’t have to change your resume for every single job, but if the jobs are different enough then yes you will benefit from changing the resume slightly.

What’s The Point in Tailoring Your Resume For Each Job?

So, why exactly would you switch up your resume for every job you are applying for? Well, you wouldn’t.

The point is not that you’re going to want to change your resume for each job, only for jobs that differ in scope enough that requires different resumes.

So, if you were applying for an administrative assistant role, then you wouldn’t really need to tailor your resume.

However, if you were applying for a project manager role, then it would make sense for you to tailor your resume. If you don’t have a resume that fits the job your applying for, then its likely that your resume won’t get you an interview.

Different job titles require different resumes. You are not doing yourself any favors if you submit a resume with a list of admin assist experiences to a company that is looking to hire an event planner or a project manager.

Think of it like this, HR staff at major companies are the opposite of creative. They don’t think outside the box. They do the exact opposite. So you need to anticipate their every non-thought and spell everything out for you. Even recrutiers are not that creative. They look for very specific details on a resume.

How Many is Too Many?

Most recruiters will tell you about people who send them multiple resumes. As a rule, don’t do this. It’s not appropriate and basically tags you as someone not to work with.

It’s similar to the advice that you shouldn’t have a two page resume.

Tailor your resume to different jobs and keep them on your own computer. Then submit the appropriate resume to the recruiter or HR team member.

And to be clear, we are not discussing totally different resumes. There is no need to change your entire resume for each job. But, it would be advisable to tailor and change the job titles and the key points when you are applying for jobs in different industries for jobs with different job titles.

As we discussed above, the idea is this:

A company hiring for an administrative assistant is not likely to look for a person who doesn’t have that job title on their resume.

Should You Ever Send Multiple Versions of Your Resume

No. And this is not something where there’s much room for debate. When you send a recruiter or a HR member multiple versions of your resume you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot.

Simply put, you are not doing yourself any favors by flooding a recruiter inbox with multiple versions of your resume.

At best, you will come across as someone who is a bit too enthusiastic. At worst, the recruiter will see you as someone who is erratic and unstable. It might not be accurate, but you can’t risk that sort of impression.

If you’re dealing with a professional recruiter, then you need to be very careful about how to come across.

What I would suggest you do is have different versions of your resume, but to never send more than a single version to a recruiter or even submit multiple versions to an HR employee.

When Should You Change Your Resume For Different Jobs?

Since it appears that it’s almost never a good idea to switch resumes or send in multiple copies of your resume, is there ever a good reason?

Yes (in case you skimmed the beginning section where I cover this) there are good reasons.

You have to change your resume for certain job reasons. For instance, if you are applying to be an account executive, then that title needs to appear on your resume. So, if you are sending out a resume where that job title is not on the resume, then you need to create a different resume.

This doesn’t mean that you need to change everything. Not at all. You really only need to change job titles. And in most cases that’s it. Honestly, many recruiters and HR staff won’t even read the lines below your job titles. If they do, it’s to see that you don’t have glaring spelling issues.

So, it’s fine to have multiple versions of your resume just make sure that you only send one out.