Resume Writing Tips

 

Keep your resume simple and use “CREST” technique to write your resume.

- Your resume must be Concise.
- Your resume must be easy to Read.
- Your resume should be Expressive.
- Your resume must Sell you.
- Your resume must be Tailored to what the reader is looking for.

Resume writing is like advertising. Your resume must sell you to a prospective employer and compete against other applicants who are also trying to sell themselves. So the challenge in resume writing is to be more appealing and attractive than the rest. This means that your resume must be presented professionally, clearly and in a way that indicates you are an ideal candidate for the job, i.e. you possess the right skills, experience, behavior, attitude, morality that the employer is seeking.

Put yourself in the shoes of the employer: write down a description of the person they are looking for. You can now use this as a blue-print for your resume. The better the match the more likely you are to be called for an interview.

Presentation and order is important, as it is in advertising, and most people get it wrong. When you are selling anything you need to get to the key points quickly. The quicker the reader can read and absorb the key points the more likely they are to buy. A well presented resume also indicates that you are professional, business-like and well organised. The structure suggested below sells your strengths first followed by educational details then career history and provides personal details last - most people do it the other way round. You can immediately stand out from them and make a much better impression.

You have just few minutes to sell yourself to the employer. Many people have misconception about writing resume they feel the more you write in resume the more you have a chance to be called for an interview. Nobody has time to go through the resume of more than 2 pages. Nobody reads the entire resume they have a glance on it and if feel interesting then only read the details and to do this you need to put things in points so that it will appear prominently.

Resume is a first impression of your personality, most of the time people try to evaluate on the basis of resume writing.

For younger people going for junior positions, it should be possible to get all of your resume on one side of standard sheet of business paper. For more senior positions you will need two or three sheets for the detailed career history and achievements. Always try to use as few words as possible. In resume writing, like advertising, "less is more". This means you need to think carefully about the words you use.

Personal Profile:
Five to seven high impact statements that describe you. These are effectively your personal strengths. Be bold, confident and positive when you construct these key statements. Orientate the descriptions to the type of job you are seeking. If you have a serious qualification and it's relevant, include it as the final point.

Education:
Your education plays very vital role in seeking a job. Now a days most of the companies prefer employee from the premium institute, need some information about your schooling to know where you have grown up and about college to know more about your personality and the environment.

Experience:
This is not your career history. It's a bullet points description of your experience. Make sure you orientate these simple statements to meet the requirements of the reader, in other words ensure the experience/strengths are relevant to the type of job/responsibility that you are seeking. Again try to use powerful statements and impressive language - be bold and check that the language and descriptions look confident and positive. If you are at the beginning or very early stage of your career you will not have much or any work experience to refer to, in which case you must refer to other aspects of your life experience - your college or university experience, your hobbies, social or sports achievements, and bring out the aspects that will be relevant to the way you would work. Prospective employers look for key indicators of initiative, creativity, originality, organisation, planning, cost-management, people-skills, technical skill, diligence, reliability, depending on the job; so find examples of the relevant required behaviors from your life, and encapsulate them in snappy, impressive statements. Go for active not passive descriptions, i.e. where you are making things happen, not having things happen to you.

Achievements:
High impact descriptions of your major achievements. Separate, compact, impressive statements. Ensure you refer to facts, figures and timescales - prospective employers look for quantative information - hard facts, not vague claims. These achievements should back up your Personal Profile claims earlier - they are the evidence that you can do what you say. Again they must be relevant to the role you are seeking.

Career History:
A tight compact neatly presented summary of your career history. Start with the most recent or present job and end with the first. Show starting and finishing years - not necessarily the months. Show company name, city address - not necessarily the full address. Show your job title(s). Use a generally recognised job title if the actual job title is misleading or unclear. (You can club this with experience giving detail of each position)

Personal Details:
Use these sub-headings to provide details of full name, sex (if not obvious from your name), address, phone, email, date of birth, marital status, number of children and ages if applicable. Keep all this information very tight, compact and concise. If you are at a more advanced stage of your career you can choose to reduce the amount of personal details shown as some will be implicit or not relevant.

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