A resume is a powerful tool. It is a sales document through which an individual tries to sell their skills to the hiring organisation. As a fresher, it often gets quite confusing how to proceed with an attractive resume that can really DO ITS JOB. Below are a few resume writing tips that will help make sure you stand out from the crowd:
Start with a Resume Summary Statement.
- Resume summaries are a great way to quickly describe your most important qualifications and direct the interviewer towards your strengths. You should use a short and powerful statement that highlights your most impressive qualifications/activities. For example: “A proven leader in creating efficient workflows and increasing productivity.”
- Use action verbs. For resume writing, most candidates use the same action verbs (e.g., “managed,” “developed,” etc.) when describing their achievements on resumes, but these words lack punch and don’t tell an employer anything new about you or how great of a candidate you are.
Include your most important achievements in the Work Experience & Projects section.
Achievements are your successes, so include them in the Work Experience & Projects section of your resume. You can do this by listing them as bullet points at the end of each job description or by creating a separate section that lists all of your achievements. Your achievements should be relevant to the job position you’re applying for, but not necessarily directly related to it (e.g., if you were an admin assistant who managed an office, then “created a streamlined filing system for reports” is an achievement; whereas “organized monthly staff meetings” would not be considered an achievement).
Not only does it look good if you have many achievements listed on your resume; it also shows potential employers how much initiative and drive you have.
Your Skills & Certifications.
During resume writing, when you’re listing your skills and certifications, it’s important to list your skills first. If you have a lot of certifications, then they can be listed after your main list of skills. You should prioritize the most important skills first, but if you have many similar skills or certifications and they can’t all fit on one page, then you should prioritize the ones that are most relevant to the job at hand. As always though, try not to make any lists so long that they take up more than half of your resume.
Include more than just your soft skills.
As we’ve talked about, when you’re applying for jobs, your resume is the first impression you make on a prospective employer. So, it makes sense that there are certain things you want to put on your resume and certain things you want to leave off. For example, if your prospective employer wants someone with good communication skills then yes—add that in! But what about soft skills like “creativity” or “people skills?”
These are some of the most common buzzwords that appear on resumes but mean little in practice. In fact, these vague descriptors can actually be detrimental; they give hiring managers an excuse not to read through all the information presented (if they don’t see any concrete examples).
The problem with including generic words such as those above is they aren’t backed up by evidence and thus make it difficult for recruiters and hiring managers who are looking at hundreds of applications each day to determine whether or not someone has a particular quality or trait required for the job in question.
Design and layout.
Use:
- a clean, professional resume design
- a resume template
- a resume format that is easy to read
- a resume format that is easy to print
- a resume format that is easy to update
- a resume format that is easy to share
Focus on what you’ve achieved, not just what you’ve done in work experience
When you’re writing your resume, focus on what you’ve achieved, not just what you’ve done in work experience. Instead of listing just the responsibilities of each job, list the outcomes or results that you achieved. For example:
- Worked as a research assistant for two professors at a university
- Co-authored a paper published in a top journal 2 years ago
Instead of listing all of your skills and certifications, list things that show how well those skills can be used and how much knowledge they require. For example:
- Created codes for an epidemiological study using Python (programming language) after only 2 years of exposure to programming languages. Knowledge gained from this project has helped me develop an interest in analytics and data science courses offered by my school.
And finally (and most importantly), never underestimate the power of editing for good grammar.
Keeping these tips in mind, one should be ready to start writing their resume. Family members or friends are a good source of initial feedback.