While going for a job search the first thing that we need is a good resume so that we can get the access to the interview process. In this journey it is essential that we know “what does a good resume look like?” and prepare our resume accordingly.
The days of typical table structure in our resumes are gone, when we kept everything in tabular format. Now, an impressive resume needs to be structured better. It should have only the most required information and essential links to your social media profile. A good resume catches the attention of the employer and hence gives you access to the interview process.
In this blog, we have explained all the important points you should include in your resume to make it stand out.
1. Understanding the Purpose of a Resume
A resume is not just a simple piece of paper, it is your identity to an employer who does not know anything about you. Hence, to create a strong and impressive identity a good resume is a must.
The first and most important role of a resume in the job application process is that your resume gets shortlisted for the interview process. However, this shortlisting is not easy. The unemployment in India is huge and hence for each role, multiple applications are submitted. In such a scenario, an employer is not going to interview all the candidates. The employer will simply shortlist those resumes that he/she finds most relevant to the job description.
Therefore, to influence the hiring decision of the employer, you must ensure that your resume looks appropriate. If the required details are not clear and relevant to the job description, your application may get rejected.
In fact, these days not all resumes are reviewed by the human resource professionals of the companies, but it is reviewed by artificial intelligence which is also known as “Application Tracking System (ATS).” Thus, it is essential that you create a resume that is ATS-friendly. To make your resume ATS-friendly, you should ensure that the most important components of the resume are included.
2. Essential Components of a Strong Resume
A. Contact Information: What to Include
How will an employer contact you? Obviously on your email address and mobile number. You must ensure that your contact information including Name, Phone Number, Email Address and Location is mentioned very clearly in your resume.
Employers are very particular about the candidates they are going to hire and hence they do a thorough check of your social media accounts as well. Therefore, you should have a strong LinkedIn profile and the link to that profile should be added to your resume so that employers can easily access your profile and analyze your skills and experience.
B. Professional Summary: Crafting the Right First Impression
The professional summary gives an idea about your overall profile to the employer. The professional summary should include your work experience and the key skills that you have. Based on this the employer will proceed with your resume further and will go deeper into your work experience. Hence, a professional summary works as a first impression. And we all know, the first impression is the last impression.
C. Work Experience: Presenting Your Career History
Now, it’s about the main part of your resume where you talk about the work you have done in the past. This is the part that will decide whether you will be shortlisted for the interview process or not.
You must present your work history in a chronological manner. Here you talk about the latest experiences first and then the older ones. In work history, it is essential that you mention the Company Name, Designation and Duration clearly. With this, the employer will be able to understand the total experience you have and the different roles you have played in your career.
It is possible that you have played many roles in your previous work experience, but not all the work that you have done is relevant to the job you are applying for and therefore, you have to be careful while mentioning the details in your resume. You should mention only those roles which can create an impact. Obviously, if there is no gap in your work profile, you should not bring a gap in your resume, only because you do not want to mention an irrelevant role. You can simply give less weight to this part.
One important aspect of work history is the measurement. You should ensure that whatever work experience you are mentioning – you have included the impact that you brought by putting the numbers. For example – if you worked in a company as a sales manager for 1 year, you can mention the total amount of sales that you did during that year and what was the growth from the previous year. Such details impress the employers and push them to ask questions in those areas where you are strong, during the interview.
3. Tailoring Your Resume for Specific Roles
A. Analyzing Job Descriptions
As mentioned earlier, you need to ensure that your resume is customized as per the needs of the job. For this, you must read the job description thoroughly and find out the key skills that are needed. Accordingly, prepare your professional summary and work experience.
Not only this, you can prepare different resumes for different industries as well. Let’s assume that you have worked in the customer service department of an IT company. Now, the best thing is that you apply for a customer service role only that too in an IT company. But, you could find yourself eligible for a customer service role in an FMCG company too. In such a case, you have to highlight those parts of your work experience that can be helpful for a customer service role in an FMCG company. Thus, it is essential that you understand the needs of the employer and put your points accordingly in the resume.
Another important point that you should not miss is “Keywords”. Yes, keywords play a vital role in getting your resume shortlisted for the interview. These days ATS friendly resumes are required. Your resume will pass the ATS test only if it has the required keywords included in it. Now, the question arises – how to know which keywords to include in the resume? Simply read the job description and see what skills are needed. Then look back at your work history and find out what you did that required the same skills. Add the skill to that point and put it in your resume.
B. The Importance of Personal Branding
Whatever you have mentioned in your resume, will be verified by the employer. You need to be careful while giving the information and you must ensure that whatever you are mentioning is correct. At times, employers visit your social media profiles to check your personal interests too. Therefore, your resume must be aligned with your social media presence.
Here comes another angle of a successful career – personal branding. With your presence on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, you speak a lot about your personality. Thus, your online presence should match your resume description too. It should not happen that you are applying for a video editing profile and you have mentioned in your resume that you love creativity while editing videos. And on the other hand on your Instagram account, you are constantly talking about content writing as your passion. Make sure that your personal branding is aligned with your career goals.
4. Design and Formatting Tips for Maximum Impact
A. Choosing the Right Resume Format
What if you have written a very good story but you do not know how to narrate it? The story will lose its impact. The same goes with resumes too. A resume is a story about you and to narrate it effectively, you must give it a good impactful design. There are three main types of resume formats that you can use: Chronological, Functional and Combination.
- Chronological: here you mention the job experience in chronological order with the recent job at the top. You basically prepare a list of all the jobs you have done in your career in descending order of time. This type of resume is good for those who have worked in the same industry for a long and have no employment gaps.
- Functional: What if you have frequent job changes in your resume? Listing it in chronological order may alert your employer about your stability. In such a scenario, it is always better to focus more on the qualifications and skills that you have acquired rather than giving a list of all the roles that you have played. This type of resume is called a functional resume.
- Combination: Next comes the combination of both – chronological and functional. Suppose you have a decade of experience and you have acquired different skills during the last decade. In this case, you would want to focus on both – the duration as well as the skills. Here, the combination will help you build a strong resume.
Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages. You need to identify the best case that suits your career goals.
B. Visual Presentation: Making It Easy to Read
This is the part of resume building that usually candidates ignore, but it creates a greater impact on their selection. It is about ensuring that your resume looks good and it is easy to read and understand.
It is important that you use the appropriate font and font size for your resume. Avoid using too many fonts for different sizes. Your resume should look clean and consistent.
Along with this, you should also ensure that there is enough blank space left in your resume. For this, you can have proper page margins set before you start making it. With extra space left, first, your resume does not look too wordy and second, if the interviewer wants to write some points during the interview – he has a place to write those pointers. The bullet points and different sections should also be aligned. There are different websites and tools available online that help you format your resume. Prebuilt resume templates are there that you can use to edit and make your own resume. It becomes easier with the templates.
C. Common Formatting Mistakes to Avoid
Below are some common formatting mistakes that you should avoid while making your resume:
- Overly Complicated Layouts: Whichever format you have used, you must ensure that the layout is not complicated. It should look clean and simple. Even if you are applying for a creative role – you should ensure that the different sections in your resume are placed perfectly in appropriate places.
- Inconsistent Styling: Inconsistency will lead to rejection. The inconsistency could be in your format, font selection, font size and any other design element like colour and margins. Make sure that you are consistent with the style that you are using in all the sections.
- Lengthy Resumes: Another common mistake that candidates usually make is preparing lengthy resumes and putting unnecessary information. Employers have to shortlist many candidates and interview them to select one final candidate and hence they would prefer a short resume that talks to the point and is relevant to the job description. Making a lengthy resume of 4-5 pages does not ensure that you will get the job. Thus, keep it short and simple.
5. Finalizing and Optimizing Your Resume
A. Proofreading and Editing
Once you have completed your resume, the final step is about proofreading and editing. You will spend many hours writing your resume and it is possible that you make some typo errors while writing. If such errors are left in your resume, they will leave a wrong impression. Therefore, proofread every sentence of your resume and ensure that no errors are left.
You can also share your resume with your colleagues and friends to seek feedback. They can certainly help you with some important amendments that you can make to your resume to enhance its effectiveness.
B. Using Digital Tools for Optimization
Along with friends and colleagues, there are online tools as well that help you make your resume better. These tools come with artificial intelligence and give a score to your resume. Along with the score they also provide suggestions to improve the score.
There are templates that you can use to build your resume and you won’t have to start from scratch. Not only this the application websites like Naukri.com and LinkedIn provide the permance analytics as well. These performance insights can be used to enhance your resume.
C. Keeping Your Resume Updated
Till now you have understood that building a perfect resume is a long exercise and requires time. Hence you should keep your resume updated all the time. Rather than starting it when you are going to apply, it’s always better that you keep updating it at a regular frequency so that when needed, you can make minor edits and you are good to go.
Conclusion
A good resume is your key to entry into a job and hence you must ensure that your resume looks good. To build a good resume you need to ensure that you have understood the job requirements clearly and then make your resume accordingly. It needs to have a relevant professional summary and then details about your work experience. You need to decide which format you want to use and then build the bullet points accordingly.
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