Résumé, a French word that means “summary”, is every professional’s first point of contact with a prospective employer. 
True to its meaning, a résumé is supposed to present a brief but relevant summary of one’s skills, qualifications and employment details. A résumé should ideally be contained in one side—two, at the most—of an A4 sheet. Ideally, it should not list one’s education and qualifications in detail (including year, institution, etc.) but should highlight just the specific skills, presented in a customised way to target the job description.
A good résumé:
- contains bulleted information
- is written in the third person
- is objective and formal
- contains, in this order, a brief Summary of Qualifications, Areas of Strength or Expertise, Professional Experience (in reverse chronological order), Professional Affiliations, Computer / Technical Skills and Education
- gives maximum focus to the most recent job (prior experiences are summarised)
- provides the reader a balance of responsibilities and accomplishments for each designation held.
Unarguably, your résumé forms part of the first impression your potential employer gets of you. In this economy, with a massive down turn of jobs, most employers have to face a stack of such résumés. What does it take, to ensure that of the whole lot, your résumé piques your employer’s interest?
A résumé has become the key to your dream job…but it gets just 10-15 seconds before the employer decides between his desk and the dustbin as your résumé’s final destination.
Specific job applications can be more targeted. It is always good if you know the company before-hand and enhance your résumé, customising it to their requirements. That way, you can present your qualification, experience and achievements in the way that suits the recruiter and the needs best. To the maximum extent possible, make it as brief, concise and to the point—like a capsule that is quickly edible, rather than as a 5-course meal! This will make it easy for the employer to sort through the résumés. A covering letter would ideally help you project your achievements and your suitability to the position offered, in a much concise and customised manner.
While writing your résumé…
If you intend to submit your résumés in online job portals, do it only after making sure that your Résumé has all the necessary industry-specific keywords. Search engines should be able to pull out your profile every time an employer is out there seeking for potential employees.
Consider your résumé as a marketing tool…and make the most of it to market a very invaluable product—You!
Dos
- Customise it, as much as possible, to the job in question.
- Fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana and Palatino Linotype would be good choices—since they are the ones popularly used and available on every computer these days. Fancy fonts might look good on your system—but if the recipient does not have it installed in the receiving system, your résumé could boil down to squares and dots and illegible symbols! Not to mention your employer may not share your taste in fonts.
- Restricting the font-size between 10 and 12 and formatting the text with bullets and margins will help enhance readability. As in all things, simplicity is the key here: so keep the language and format basic and easy to comprehend.
- Author it powerfully and substantially.
- There are a lot of employers who use online technologies to sort résumés. Hence, it is safer to make it as neat and as presentable as possible.
Don’ts
- Avoid stuffing too much of personal data that is of no interest to the employer.
- Avoid padding—adding elaborate words and decorating it with unnecessary sentences will only irritate the employer!
- Never fabricate experiences, education, references, and other credentials. Not only is this unethical, but most employers routinely conduct verification and checks. Once false information is uncovered, consider your job goodbye.
Social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace have become very popular among industrial bigwigs in searching for, and finding, potential employees. Hence, when you are in the lookout for a job, you can use all your web profiles to show why you are an ideal candidate. The greater your visibility, the better your chances–assuming you use your web presence to your advantage.
With a wounded economy, scarce vacancies, and a multitude of applicants, the situation becomes extremely competitive and frustrating. To surface as the perfect choice from a plethora of résumés is a challenging task–remember that the employer reviewing your résumé is probably furstrated as well. So, create a résumé that works best for both parties—you and the employer.
As in all matters of life, reliability and trust is very important when seeking a job. Employers carry out various checks—pre-employment screening, identity verification, reference verifications, etc precisely because trust can be very difficult to attain during these early interactions, and even if trust exists, verification must accompany it. A ‘seal of verification’ in your résumé which affirms that your credentials have been verified and which allows the resume viewer to review the verification records will save the employer a lot of trouble! Here at Crederity, we’ve found that over 85% of hiring employers would prefer to review such resumes. If you’re curious, you should try out Crederity.
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