Resume Writing Tips
With employers receiving hundreds of resumes you must make sure that your resume hooks an employer's attention within a 10-second glance. A recent survey reveals that only 20 to 30 percent of resumes catch the employer’s attention. The following tips will give you an idea on how to make an effective resume. But keep in mind that these tips are just guidelines. Everyone's background is different so there is no single formula of writing resume that fits all cases. Use these tips to guide your thought process. Keep in mind that you have only few seconds to make a good impression with your resume.
Tip 1 – Use design that grabs attention
Employers make snap judgments when glancing at your resume. The design of your resume should cover your vast experience, skills, and accomplishments, while ensuring your resume is crisp, appealing and fits well to a recruiter's mandate. At first glance this information forms the image that employers have of your skills and abilities.
Tip 2 – Create content that sells
Ultimately you have to sell yourself to the employer. Your resume should answer the question; why should I hire you? The content should highlight your strength over others.
Tip 3 – Use Power Words
Power words, or action verbs, are words used to help make a statement stronger. They create an "active voice" instead of a "passive voice" on your resume. Power words such as demonstrated, developed, established, delivered, crafted, contributed, etc really help.
Tip 4 – Analyze job descriptions to identify key words
Key words that employers provide in job descriptions can help you to write your skills in your resume. By reading job description thoroughly you get a fair idea of what skills an employer look for in a candidate.
Tip 5 – Prioritize the Content of Your Resume
A big mistake that job seekers make is to list very important data in the lower sections of resume. Prioritize content by importance, impressiveness and relevance to the job you want.
Tip 6 – Size of your resume
The size of your resume for entry level positions should not be more than two A4 pages. Although it depends on your past experiences but keep in mind that lengthy resume is not read thoroughly by employers.
Tip 7 – Alignement, font, font size, spacing etc.
Poor alignments, font, font size, spacing etc create a very bad impression to the reader even if your content is good enough. Generally accepted font is Arial or Times New Roman, font size is 10 to 12, and spacing is 1.15 or 1.5.
Tip 8 – Professional email id
Email with your name is always the best for business and corporate communication. Though it is not easy to make email id with your name due to availabilty of an id only once. Try to use ids like gauravagrawal@gmail.com, vivekdev@yahoo.com, rajsinha@gmail.com. Avoid email ids such as duffy_duckmuskan@gmail.com, cute.girlsonali@yahoo.co.in, handsomekaushik@rediffmail.com etc.
Tip 9 – Specific career objective
Spend time on writing career objective as it clearly tells employer about the right match between yourself and the dream job you want to land.
Tip 10 – Grammar and spelling mistakes
Use the spell-check tool, but remember that the best proofreader is another set of eyes. Be sure that there are no grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, poor word choice. These mistakes are not acceptable as it might appear that you are negligent with your work.
Remember a resume is a self-promotional document that presents you in the best possible light, for the purpose of getting invited to a job interview. It's not just about past jobs! It's about YOU, and how you performed and what you accomplished in those past jobs especially those accomplishments that are most relevant to the work you want to do next. A good resume predicts how you might perform in that desired future job. Leaving out their Job Objective! If you don't show a sense of direction, employers won't be interested. Having a clearly stated goal doesn't have to confine you if it's stated well.
