Your resume is practically your first impression to your boss that will bag you the job and the fat package you had always wanted for yourself! And since it is in a written format you have to make sure that your resume looks absolutely professional with zero errors. Imagine how great it would be when every job application of yours will actually convert to a job!
So instead of beating about the bush about how important it is to efficiently write a resume, let’s plunge directly into how a good resume is like:
Formal tone
Let’s get straight to it! This is not a letter to your ex, this is a writing which will make you beat a thousand people and fetch you that dream job that will skyrocket your career to a different level. Hence, the tone of your resume should be extremely professional and NO SMS LINGO can be used!
Easy to read:
Your resume must be legible, consist of short sentences written in a clear and precise way such that your boss can go through it easily and absorb from it the conception of who you are and if you are fit for his organization or not.
Hence, to improve the readability, you must write the whole resume in a single font, preferably, Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman. Informal fonts such as Comic Sans, Curlz MT are a strict no! Headings and subheadings should always be provided wherever necessary, in bold, to render a hierarchical pattern to your resume. Font size 14 for headings and size 12 for other texts are usually preferred. Dense block texts, run-on sentences or resume printed on colored papers are absolutely unacceptable.
Consistent styling:
You may be rolling your eyes and thinking why is she repeating all the usual stuff! Well, I have seen a lot of freshers aspiring to join the workforce and their resumes have got bullets at some places or numbering in other or maybe, pointers. Such inconsistency will always affect the efficiency of your resume and may even cost you a job! Hence, if you are using bullets before every point, stick to it all through. Also, see to it, that the start of every paragraph should fall along one vertical line.
Clarity of thought:
When you are interested in a particular job and you are applying for it, you must be clear about who you are! Sounds funny right! But trust me that is one of the most difficult things to understand. You must be very clear about yourself, what you want, why you want it and how. You must be able to explain in short crisp lines about what kind of job seeker you are; whether you are a newbie, willing to join the workforce for the first time, or you are a moderately experienced individual who wants to change his place of work or his job role. But in every case, the one thing that you will have to explain is why you are relevant for the job you have applied for or what makes you a preferable candidate.
One-words over full sentences:
Try writing some topics in your resume such as strengths and weakness in a single word or a group of 3-4 words making points. Full sentences are not required. For example, try writing only Creative, Hard-working and Good team player in 3 different points under the strengths section instead of writing “I am a creative person who is hard-working as well as a good team player”. This makes the resume look more precise, professional and readable.
Also, make a grid or a table when you are writing all your degrees, marks, qualifying examinations etc, instead of writing them in long sentences. Make several columns for all the attributes on the top of the table and add the values such as 85.6%, 2018 inside the corresponding cells of the table.
Edit your resume very carefully:
After you compose your resume, go through it very patiently and read every word carefully for any spelling mistake, punctuation error, grammatical error or wrong sentence correction. Consult a dictionary or search spellings or word meanings on Google if you are not sure about the usage of a definite word. Make sure your resume is absolutely error free and consistent.
Maintain a reverse chronology:
Whenever you are writing certain events together, try arranging them in the reverse chronological order. For example, when you mention your educational qualification, you should put your last attained degree first and all the way down to your first degree, which will probably be your Secondary degree; such as Ph. D, M.Sc, B.Sc, Higher Secondary and lastly, Secondary.
In the same way, when you mention your work experience, start with the last organization where you have worked or still working and down to the first one.
Precise and focused:
This is effectively a re-iteration of some of the ideas put forward before but nonetheless, needs mention. Your resume should be focused on highlighting your skills, achievements and why you are qualified for the job. Other unnecessary information such as age, sex, nationality, undesirable hobbies that make absolutely no relevance to your job role, reasons and excuses for backlogs, low percentages, full and complete sentences should be kept off the resume to make it clean and clutter-free. Remember, you have around 30-40 seconds to make your first impression.
Be honest:
Well, I have seen a lot of my friends and colleagues inflate their percentages or c.g.p.a. to get preference over other candidates and sometimes, they are even lucky enough not to get caught at any point of time! However, almost 80-85% of established companies hire their employees after a thorough examination of all their documents and certificates and any such discrepancy or dishonesty is dealt with the utter rigidity which can even cost them their job. But I am sure you don’t want to end up like that! Hence, the best way is to maintain complete honesty. In fact, the reasons for inflating marks have mostly been diffidence in one’s abilities and shamefulness with regard to low marks in exams or under-performance during employment.
But remember, your past performance is something you cannot change. However, it is never too late to start afresh and in spite of all the lows in your career, you must have faith in yourself and believe in your capabilities and strive to establish yourself as a better individual than you were the day before. The secret to cracking an interview is taking responsibility for everything that has happened in your professional life and being confident and positive despite the seemingly unfavorable situation.
Well, now that a lot of theoretical know-how has already been provided to you, we will now look into some practical examples of how to write a great resume. Here, we have some of the best hand-picked resume templates which you need to download and go through them thoroughly. Do not hesitate to revert in case of any issue and mention your queries in the comment section below.