Resumes are essential; they are the primary step that could lead you to a job or not. No matter how skilled, experienced, or perfect you are, a bad resume can take away from you your dream job. So, what shall you do? The answer is pretty obvious, create a resume that makes the HR or hiring authority meet you in person and hand over the offer letter!
Sounds like a perfect plan. But for this plan to work, you first need to figure out what all it takes to build a perfect, rock-star resume that’s just BANG ON. Open your ears, eyes, heart, and brain, because we are going to spill the magic beans that’ll help you write a resume that always gets you shortlisted (given that you are compatible for the post).
Guide to build the ultimate resume – Get noticed, get hired!
1. Think of yourself as a brand
The moment you start treating yourself as a brand, things will start falling to place. Imagine that you are a brand which needs to sell itself, what you’ll do? You’ll highlight your advantages, benefits, and all the best things you can think off, correct.
Build your resume strategically, think of the recruiter as a buyer and efficiently tell him why to are the best for the job. Make your points clear, and don’t leave him/her hanging to figure out who you are and will they be taking the right decision by selecting you?
2. Learn about the job & then create a resume
Don’t just start building a resume out of the blue. Follow the correct steps to write an effective resume and believe us that’s nowhere close to copying the resume templates available online. Now, if you know of a job offering and want to apply for the same, your first step should be to know more about the job description and requirement and then start with your resume making process.
Knowing about the job will help you present your education, knowledge, and skill set in a way that perfectly fits the job opening mould. This also means, no two resumes of yours should be the same. Don’t, we repeat, don’t use a universal resume everywhere, this practice does no good and only cut-shout your selection chances.
3. Skillset first then any information
Take a moment and think, think what is the one thing that recruiter is looking for in all the resumes. It’s the required skill set he is in search for that perfectly matches the job requirement. Therefore, we strongly recommend reading the job requirement before writing your skills and once you have decided the best way to present your traits, do place them on the top.
Yes, place your well-drafted skillset at the top of your resume, as that is what matters the most. Your personal information, objective all can take following positions, it won’t make a difference, but you tailor-made skill info should be visible up-front.
4. Design that impresses
Drop the old-school approach where a resume looks like coming straight from the black and white era. Time has changed, and so is the process of selection that has now become more open, interactive, and creative. Your experience and academic qualification will get added support of freshness and uniqueness with a smarty designed resume.
By design, we not only mean using the right font style and size but also the correct resume layout that best reflects your pros well and even goes with the job you are applying for…
Don’t worry; it’s easy to create an attractive, rockstar resume with free online tools that lets you create customised resume and offers an abundance of free templates suiting different job profiles.
5. Skip the career objective part
Yes, get your facts straight. Career objectives is a thing of past that no one reads or care about in the present. So, if you already have a resume that starts with ‘Objective’, trash is where it belongs. As mentioned above, go with the skill section first and then continue with experience, achievements, awards, education, and personal information.
Those arguing about its importance, you can’t fight over a more wrong subject. First, this section looks way too generic (one of the reasons its dying nature) and secondly, the recruiter is not interested in knowing ‘what you want’, rather they are searching someone that fulfils ‘what they want’. Therefore, until you have something meaningful to write, we suggest to skip this part altogether.
6. Proofreading is a must
Read your resume time and again before you send it to the recruiter. If needed, you can take help from a friend with a sound language concept. Your aim should be to assure that your resume is free from any error, be it informative, grammatical, spelling, or punctuation.
An errorful resume can be a significant turn-over and end your chances of getting a job or a call-back then and there. Make use of language correcting tools like Grammarly to get a well-edited resume without any help.
7. Try limiting all the info to one page
More pages your resume has, more are the chances of the recruiter missing out information. Because let’s face it, no one really has the time, energy, and even concentration to devote to one single resume. So, until you are not applying for a high-profile job, there’s no need to pass on a multi-page resume.
Try choosing a resume layout that fits all your information is a smart and compact way.
These were the seven sincere tips to create a fantastic resume that rocks on every recruiter’s desk. Apart, from the mentioned tips, try using positive words in your resume and remember to revamp your LinkedIn profile to make it at par with your updated resume.
That’s all the tips we can think off, go ahead and write a fresh, succeeding resume.
Best of Luck!
Prince Kapoor is Independent Marketing Analyst and Blogger. While not working, you can find him in gym or giving random health advises to his colleagues which no one agrees on :D. If you too want some of his advises (on health or on marketing), reach him out at @imprincekapur
While the quality of the corrections it details is impressive, my coworker and I still concur the edits by themselves are rules-based. I proved this idea when I tried this artificial intelligence app named INK.