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. |