Making A Resume

Are you worried about writing your resume, or confused with the task of making your resume. Creating your resume is not an intimidating task if you understand the objective of your resume i.e. to generate interest and interviews in your desired job profile and industry. Resume doesn’t need to cover your personal life history, but it should attract the interest of the recruiters. Your curriculum vitae should answer the questions of the recruiters (Will this candidate add value to my company? Is the candidate suitable for the post?)

In this article you will learn how to make a resume. How your resume can be attractive and answer the questions of recruiters. Making resume which will make you stand out from the crowd and convince potential employers that you are the one suitable candidate they were looking for.

For one job advertisement employer do get hundreds of applications and the recruiter spend little more than a few hours to sort out the few good resumes from the mountain of resumes they receive. In short your resume will have less than a minute to grab the reader’s attention and convince them to sort out on the short list.

It is always said that “first impression is the last impression”. Before you even think of tactics on how to win interviews, first impression of your resume is critically important from the view point of your career. Your resume should demonstrate all your skills and competencies in bullets. The document must be clean, uncluttered layout and plenty of white space to make it easy on the eye. It should not be lengthy and more than of two pages; lengthy resume will have negative sway.

Below mentioned are the steps to follow while making resume giving you the best chance of
securing that all-important interview.

• Step One: Investigate your job strengths; focus on the competencies with the job posted requirements.
  
• Step Two: Get familiar with all the sections or parts of a resume.
• Step Three: Begin with the resume writing process for eg. If you are looking for a job of a Sales Manager then find out what are the job skills required for the job and tailor your resume accordingly.
• Step Four: WRITE...Write...write...
• Step Five: REVISE and REWRITE...Revise and Rewrite...revise and rewrite.
• Step Six: Have trusted and knowledgeable confidants review and critique your resume. Ask for and accept critical feedback.
• Step Seven: Amend the document as per the feedback.

Your resume must be concisely worded and achievement oriented, with the most important information, such as key skills, competencies and achievements near the beginning, where it will draw the employer in and persuade them to read on. The reader must be able to find easily the information they require in order to assess the relevance of your application. If the data they need is not immediately obvious, they will in all likelihood simply move on to the next resume. Therefore sequence of each section is also critically important in writing resume.

The most effective way of laying out your resume is to summarize the details. Mention all your skills, talents and experience in a profile section at the top. Then you should provide key points of your competencies skills and abilities to perform task, followed by summary section highlighting your major career achievements. After that, outline your employment history in reverse chronological order (most recent first). You can then summarize your educational background and any relevant training programs completed, before providing details of other relevant skills, such as IT skills. Provide your personal details under single section along with the foreign language ability.

All the steps mentioned above are equally important in resume making process but the most important step is writing of your resume / CV. Writing resume is quite simple if your objective is obvious and it is also important to know what potential employers are looking for. Once you know what is important to employers, you can target your resume to address those issues and design your draft accordingly.

Many people are surprised to learn that resume design is just as important as content, but it’s absolutely true. Research suggests that your resume has less than 20 seconds to make the right impression, so it must be eye-catching and easy to read and have the most impact possible on the reader. Following are simple things you can do while preparing layout of your resume.

• Use titles and headings effectively to grab readers’ attention.
• Organise the information on your resume to draw attention to your strengths.
• Choose the right font(s) and the right font sizes.
• Use same font throughout the document.
• Structure your resume so that it is easy to read.
• Be consistent in terms of how you present the information on your resume.
• Maintain same tense in the document while providing details.
• Don’t repeat same information / skills
• Once you are done drafting your resume, ask yourself if your resume is visually appealing.
• Pay attention to details.

These tips will help you to build a professional resume and achieve the end result to get selected for your dream job.

Wish you Luck!