If you’re a Dynamics consultant looking for a new job or contract role, the way your Dynamics resume is built will play a huge part in determining whether you’ll land an interview or not.

Employers often need elaborate combinations of niche skills when hiring Dynamics consultants. Ensuring that they can easily find those skills when reading your CV will give you a huge advantage over other candidates. With the below 7 tips, you’ll be able to quickly optimise your Dynamics resume and greatly increase your chances of getting interviewed.

 

1 – Write an effective personal profile section

The personal profile or summary section, traditionally showing at the top of your resume, is your chance to make an employer want to read more about you. This section should be short and effective. It needs to inform the hiring manager of your main areas of expertise without going into too many details.

What to do:
– Include your main Dynamics product of expertise and the most recent versions you’ve worked on.
– Mention your main industry focus and the module(s) ni which you’re specialised.
– Introduce your main technical or functional skills in a way that shows what contribution you can make to a company.

What to avoid:
– Including a career goal or lengthy details about the sort of role you are looking for. Keep this information for your cover letter or for the interviewing stage of the application process.
– Listing all of your functional/technical skills or achievements in this section.

 

2 – Include a key skills section

As recruiters who constantly go through tons of Dynamics resumes and profiles, we can assure you that a good ‘key skills’ section is a powerful tool. Most Dynamics consultants’ CVs are quite long, so it can take a lot of time to search through all of your past experiences to check that you have the necessary skills for a given role. By making this work easy for the hiring manager, you ensure that your most valuable skills won’t be overlooked.

What to do:
– Present your key skills as a bullet points list.
– Include your main functional and technical skills.
– Include other Microsoft products, Dynamics add-ons or niche technology with which you have experience.
– Mention your involvement in various parts of the Dynamics implementation lifecycle, such as user training or presales.
– Add any past experience which is relevant to your area (for instance, accounting or finance if you’re applying for an AX financials position).

What to avoid:
– Lengthy descriptions of each skill.
– Listing skills in bulky paragraphs.
– Leaving out sought-after niche skills.

 

3 – Mention your soft skills

Your soft skills will help to make the difference between you and other candidates with a similar level of experience. Make sure to include them in your Dynamics resume, especially if the job advert suggests that they are important to the employer.

What to do:
– List your main soft skills, including leadership, mentoring, communication or presentation skills.
– Prioritise the soft skills which are most relevant to the role for which you’re applying.

What to avoid:
– Including an overly long list of soft skills which would divert the employer’s attention from your main technical or functional expertise.

 

4 – Focus on your achievements, not just your tasks

The tasks you’ve performed as a part of your previous roles are, of course, important. But in order to stand out from the rest of the candidates (who are likely to have lists of responsibilities similar to yours), you need to highlight your past achievements.

When have you gone the extra mile and made a great contribution to a project? When have you saved a customer tons of money? When have you exceeded your goals? When have you stepped up and fixed an issue no one else could solve? What are your greatest professional successes?

What to do:
– Add an ‘achievements’ section under your most recent positions.
– List the most important contributions you made to the project or company.
– Include numbers or short examples wherever possible.

What to avoid:
– Making your ‘achievements’ section into a repeat of your list of responsibilities.
– Describing your achievements in too many details – remember, employers usually don’t spend a lot of time reading resumes. They need to find the relevant information about you quickly and easily.
– Listing vague or unsupported information.

 

5 – List your Microsoft certifications

Many Dynamics employers – Microsoft Partners in particular – use your Dynamics certifications as a selection criteria. Your certifications aren’t just a validation of your Dynamics skills, they’re also a proof of your commitment to keeping your knowledge up to date, as well as of your interest in your product of expertise.

What to do:
– Include your main Microsoft certifications.
– Put the most recent ones at the top of the list.

What to avoid:
– Sending your resume without updating your certification list.

 

6 – Spend time on the formatting

The formatting of your Dynamics resume plays a big part in making the employer want to read it carefully. When working on the formatting of your CV, your goal should be to make it easy for hiring managers to find the information they need in order to see that you are a good fit for their position.

What to do:
– Adjust police size or colour to make the various section of your CV easier to spot.
– Pick one or two sober colours (such as blue or grey).
– Define clear paragraphs with short sentences or bullet points.
– Keep the content short and to the point.

What to avoid:
– Overcharging the document with colours or shapes.
– Inconsistent formatting.
– Spelling mistakes.
– Huge paragraphs with no spacing and disorganised information.

 

7 – Customise your Dynamics resume for each job you apply to

For similar positions, not all employers will want the same thing. Depending on the nature of their practice (or of the project at hand), certain skills will be much more important than others.

If you’ve already had a few years of experience as a Dynamics consultant, chances are that you’ve built a rather wide array of skills and knowledge. It’s tempting to display it all in details – but what really interests the employer is how well you meet their current requirements.

What to do:
– Use the job title in the job advert as the title of your Dynamics resume.
– Go through the employer’s list of requirements and make sure that each of the requirements you meet are showing clearly in your CV.
– When describing a task or responsibility you’ve had, try to use similar wording to that of the job advert where appropriate.
– Reduce or remove the information that isn’t relevant to the position you’re applying for.

What to avoid:
– Drowning your most relevant skills into long lists which describe all of your past responsibilities.
– Forgetting to add or highlight the aspects of your experience which are most relevant to the role at hand.

 

Looking for a Dynamics job or contract? 

If you’re a Dynamics consultant looking for your next Dynamics job or contract, or if you’re simply interested in Dynamics career tips, news, training and professional tools, register with 365 Talent Portal. It’s free for consultants and it will give you access to many valuable Dynamics online resources.

 

365 Talent Portal is the online platform that enables thousands of Microsoft Dynamics consultants & Microsoft Azure consultants to improve their Dynamics careers and their technical, consulting, and soft skills, as well as advertise their profiles whenever they choose to look for Microsoft Dynamics jobs & Microsoft Azure jobs. This profile gives the best Microsoft partners and Dynamics end users instant, direct access to the consultants that want to be contacted. With a network spanning 114 countries, 365 Talent Portal allows companies to search for Dynamics consultants based on their detailed skills, rates and available dates, to find the best permanent and independent consultant resources for their projects. Companies can find and employ them via a very low cost Dynamics recruitment model on either a freelance or permanent basis, without incurring the hefty fees typical of recruitment agencies.

For all your Dynamics staffing needs, please visit 365talentportal.com,  email info@365talentportal.com  or call us on +44 2071 931 455 (UK) or +1 415 800 4263 (USA)