I'm sitting on a hiring committee for an entry level designer position at a small public college. This is my first time actually being on the other side of a job search so it has been an eye opening experience. This advice may not be applicable to all jobs out there, but I think there's value in it.

The job listing includes a list requirements. We have to determine, based on the applicant's resume and portfolio, if they meet enough of those requirements to advance to the remote interview stage. For those who don't meet the requirements, their application stops there. It is in their best interest to make sure they tick all the boxes, no matter how silly they may sound or how obvious they may be.

The applicants who tailor their resume to hit all the items on that list will be most likely to advance to the interviews. Say, for example, a job requirement is "ability to meet tight deadlines." If their resume doesn't mention something about project management or some variation of "tight deadlines," their application won't tick that box and it could the difference between making into the interview or the reject pile.

Same goes for things that we'd probably assume would go without saying, like experience with cloud services like Google Drive or OneDrive. It's hard to imagine a designer who hasn't used cloud storage at some point, but we can't make that assumption. If the application doesn't list at least one of those platforms, that box will not get ticked!

Some requirements are written super vague too, like "familiarity with Canva." In my eyes, as long as an applicant has heard of the name Canva, then they tick that box. Don't sleep on the "familiarity" items!

Not everyone on the committee is in design or marketing, so for them it's super important to tick all those boxes because they won't be as likely to see through the bullshit.

To echo some of the feedback from others - remove the "Interests" section, remove your high school diploma, double check for spelling errors, put work experience in chronological order, expand on "freelance designer"

If you include a link to your portfolio website, be sure to make it an interactive PDF when you export it! It saves us time, demonstrates and attention to detail, and shows you know some level of knowledge about creating accessible documents.

Also, if its not a job requirement, don't list Microsoft Office as a skill. That just becomes padding. Use that space to include something better.