When writing your resume, it’s a natural tendency to think about yourself – what you want to do next, what resume format you like the best, what information you think is important. One of the first steps in the resume writing process is to consider who your audience is and shift your mindset to what’s important to that hiring manager. And, it’s important to remember that it’s not about you – it’s about the employer. Your goal is to determine their specific needs and how you can step up to the plate based on your experience, skill set and past accomplishments.

Following are three resume writing tips to get you started:

1. Understand your target audience. Your resume is a professional marketing document. You need to have a clear picture in your mind of who you’re speaking to before you can sell yourself. Do some research. What type of messaging will resonate? What’s really important to them? What challenges could they be up against and how can you help? How does this align with what you’ve accomplished in the past? What type of experience and skills do they value? What’s going on in the industry and/or with the company or specific department? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you position yourself as a viable candidate.

2. Replace your objective statement with a professional summary. Employers want to know how you can help them – not how they can help you. Eliminate the objective statement and create a powerful professional summary that succinctly highlights your qualifications and demonstrates how you’re uniquely positioned to fulfill the employer’s needs.

3. Turn your responsibilities into accomplishments. Hiring managers know what you were hired to do and what your general job functions are. Focus less on listing your responsibilities and more on articulating what you delivered and the impact you had. Think about your day-to-day role, but in terms of what you did that really made a difference – consider processes and systems that you strengthened or streamlined and ways you helped reduce costs or increase revenues.

Interested in partnering with a San Francisco-based resume writer to help develop your resume? Contact Robin Kelley, a top professional resume writer, at Resume Preferred to schedule a complimentary phone call to discuss your writing needs.