Recruitment giant Hays has issued a blunt message to the hordes of job seekers out in the Australian market: Keep your message relevant.

“While our April to June 2013 Hays Quarterly Report shows there is candidate demand for a large number of roles across a range of sectors, employers are being very specific about what they want right now,” says Nick Deligiannis, Managing Director of Hays in Australia.

“A rushed resume or one that fails to use the correct terms used in a job advertisement to describe the candidate’s previous roles, their qualifications and proven work experience could see their application passed over,” says Mr Deligiannis.

While demand across a range of sectors has continued to grow, competition for the top jobs has remained as tough as ever. Prompting Mr Deligiannis to urge job hunters to keep on message.

Hays has issued the following five tips to help job hunters tighten up that resume:

  1. Go through the job advertisement and underline the keywords used to describe the skills, training and experience being sought. Search through your own career history for specific examples of how you can demonstrate you have what the employer is looking for.
  2. Phone up the contact listed in the job ad to ask if there is a position description (PD) and if so, request it be emailed to you. The more information you have, the better able you are to target your application.
  3. When tailoring your resume and cover letter to a specific job on offer, ensure you mimic the words and phrases used in the ad and PD when compiling your list of key skills as well as your career history to help you stand out from the pack - provided you can back up your claims.Don’t rely on just the cover letter to relate your skills to the role - it is quite possible that your resume will get separated and so having the skills outlined in your work history ensures that your relevance to the role is clear.
  4. Highlight the training and education you have completed or are currently undertaking to demonstrate your commitment to continuous development.
  5. Make sure you include a few achievements for your last two roles to demonstrate how you added value to your employer organisation. Achievements that feed directly into a company’s key aims are particularly strong. “No matter what your role is, being able to demonstrate that you understand the importance of having a customer focus – even when that is only internal customers – as well as the need to support for revenue generation and or cost saving efforts in an organisation will help you stand out in this market,” says Nick.