Make Your Resume Perfect: A Jobseeker’s Checklist
If you think you can land a good job with your old resume, you might be wrong. Work on making your resume precise, attractive and highlighted. Recruiters spend very less time in screening resumes, typically only a few seconds before deciding it passed or failed to impress them. In fact,
statistics reveal that recruiters spend on an average only 5-7 second scanning the resume! Moreover, an average of 250 resumes is received for each position.
Honestly, what chance does your resume stand in a pile? Very slim, unless you present a perfect resume that suits the particular job’s requirements. If you are wondering how to create a perfect resume, keep this checklist in mind.
Stick to Basic Resume Template
While there are many formats for resume creation, you must choose a particular template that suits you well instead of fitting it all into any format. For example, reverse chronological template is good for most resumes as potential employers are familiar with it. Entry-level job seekers should stick to this style as it is the first step in their career management. Here, the ‘experience’ heading comes first and then education. If you are an expert professional and want to highlight your skills first, you can go for a ‘combined’ template that has skills, experience and education as per your highlighting preferences. Sometimes, you can also choose functional or ‘skills-based’ resumes for particular job positions.
In many cases, the employers require the candidates to send or upload their resumes in a specific template. So, make sure you do that as the need may be.
Put a Career Summary at the Top
Just when the recruiter starts reading your resume, the first thing that you should place there should be an updated job profile summary. Here, you can briefly inform the employer about the role you can play for the company as per your job profile. While some hiring managers and recruiters take the pain of reading further and searching for relevant skills, most of them stop here only, if they find adequate skills mentioned here. So, you may choose to highlight your core strengths here but do remember to relate to the job requirements and how you can fill that position best.
Another information that cannot be missed is your name and contact information at the top in clear font. This is a very basic factor, but can prove a fatal mistake if you don’t pay attention!
Keep the Legibility Simple
When you are deciding the font and size for your resume, remember a few important points. Firstly, it should be legible. As recruiters have to screen a number of resumes in a limited period of time, they prefer to take up those ones first which are easy to read. So, instead of choosing flowery and unusual fonts, stick to the basic ones like Times, New Roman, Calibri, Cambria and Ariel. Cursive fonts should be avoided. The font size of 11 or 12 is good for regular text and 14 or 15 for subheadings. Use single line spacing. Avoid underlines, use bold for important texts or phrases. Keep your language consistent, like date formats, tense, icon usage and so on. This reflects your consistency as an employee too and goes a long way in career shaping in the future.
Update Experience and Education in Reverse Chronological Order
Write about the latest job first, followed by previous jobs. Mention the company’s name, location, and city and time period clearly. Write about the job title you held there, your role and achievements if any. Again, keep in mind to stress on those roles that are relevant for this new job. Instead of making a list of your job duties, include specific examples of work done. Then write about qualifying degrees in the education section. If you are applying for that kind of role for the first time or if you want to highlight a particular course that is important for that role you can keep the education section first too.
Additional Points
You can include top honour or scholarships, rewards, publications, titles, foreign language or any other important piece of information that will be eye-catching for the recruiter.
Make Your Resume SEO-friendly
Nowadays, there are several organizations which screen applications via Application Tracking System or automated systems. These systems do the initial shortlisting of the candidates on the basis of selected keywords. While these keywords are not revealed to you, it may be a good idea to search them on the internet specific to the job you are applying for. This way, you will increase the chances of passing through the first stage of screening.
Keep it Short
Remember that recruiters are pressed for time. You may have ample things to showcase but highlight only the best in a manner that your resume doesn’t exceed 1-2 pages.
You will get a lot of advice on how to make a good resume. But working on these core areas will help you hit the most important aspects, and you will be able to create a nearly ‘perfect’ resume for your next job application.
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