I applied for a lot of jobs and interviewed a LOT in the early part of my career.

I changed my resume up all the time to see what worked best, and I suggest you do the same. Every time you make a new iteration of your resume, it will likely be slightly better than the last one. If you let a resume sit for a week, and then come back and read it, chances are you'll think Wow, this sucks, I can do so much better.

That said, here are three examples of resumes with the exact same work experience. I personally like the last one best, and the first one least. But the point of posting all three, is that you can see how different formatting, choice of words, and even completely different bullet points can create a much better result. 

Another reason to change up your resume is to tailor it for a specific position. These are all geared toward a Decision Support Analyst role, but I typically use keywords from job postings in the resume I'll be sending to apply to that specific job. This is more time-consuming that sending the same resume for every application, but it's worth the effort.

Keywords: actuary, actuarial analyst, property and casualty, general liability, insurance, advanced Excel, probability and statistics, financial mathematics, SOA, CAS​

After working in a couple of Decision Support Analyst roles, I decided I wanted to try to pass some actuary exams for the sake of career advancement and learning something new. 

I want to point out that I had no actuarial experience, and I hadn't even sat for my second exam when I sent out the first resume. I had more than one year of experience as a data analyst with SQL and Excel reporting.

​I passed SOA Exam P/1 (Probability) on my first sitting with a 6 and started applying for jobs while studying for SOA Exam FM/2 (Financial Mathematics). I failed FM/2 with a 5 in June 2012, and had to sit for it again in August. I passed with a 6.

I used the first resume (PDF) to get interviews at both AIG and a very large P&C Consulting Firm with only one exam and little analyst experience. I was offered the AIG position and declined. I was offered the P&C Consulting Firm position and accepted.

The second resume posted below is an updated resume of my experience at the time I was offered the P&C Consulting Firm position, a few months after I originally applied.

This resume got me an interview for a Business Analyst II position, even with very little experience. I thought I really wanted a job at Anthem - it was close to my house and also a very credible organization. It turned out not to be for me, and I didn't get an offer.

I found throughout applying and interviewing for jobs, it seemed to work out that way. If I was put off by an interview, I rarely got an offer. In this case, the environment was a little too uptight for me. I would not have done well there.

But I got the interview, regardless, with this resume:

This resume got me interviews with Fredericks of Hollywood (yes, the lingerie store) for a Financial/General Analyst role and with a corporate tax consulting firm. I was not offered the position at Fredericks, and I declined the offer of the consulting firm.

I exploited my experience with the ROI analysis I did for our disease management program as well as other finance-based projects I worked on. I also used the word revenue often, though I could have used it earlier.

Keywords: decision support, healthcare, Access, SQL, Excel, medical claims data, databases

This resume, with less than one year of related experience, got me an interview with a mid-sized non-profit healthcare organization who was hiring an entire team. I was lucky they were open to candidates with less experience, but a lot of potential.

Keywords: reporting, metrics, pivot tables, advanced Excel, data analytics

​This resume got me an interview for a Decision Support Analyst position with a non-profit community healthcare organization, which I was then offered, and accepted. 

​I had no prior experience as an analyst, except that my previous job title was "business analyst" and I took it upon myself to learn Excel and reporting, including pivot tables and lookups, in that position, and made my job into a reporting job (to report on the work my team did). This is basically how I kickstarted my career in analytics.

​I was able to use my resume as a tool to communicate the little experience I did have in a big way.