Resumes In and Out

A lot of ways, it tells about you; it commands if you would have your favourite healthy dish or end up eating fast food or junk food just to satisfy your hunger; it says if you would have a holiday break or save for rainy days; and most of the time it shows more about you than you could ever imagine. I’m talking about your resume. Your resume says everything about your professional life. It’s more than a summary of how well you did in your career ladder. It’s the only way you’ll communicate with the hiring managers and you only have a few seconds to make your best foot forward. Now how to write a resume?

Other than writing your resume with the right fonts, color, spacing, alignment, paper, and other formatting, could you think of what are the basic in and out of your resume?

To stand out from the rest of the application, it always pays to check your employer’s background; this will individualize your resume and will not make it look generic. Hiring managers would know immediately if you did some research about the company; you should show this in your well polished summary and it should only be 3-5 sentences with your employer’s keyword. Your qualification should all fit to your employer’s need and use figures whenever you can; this shows a lot about your work ethics and accomplishment.

In your description, you should use action words only once and try to stay away from overused action words and this should also match to your employer’s keyword. You should always match your qualifications to your employer’s keyword in 1 sentence with figures. Hiring managers like to spend more time when they see figures in your resume.

For entry level, try to keep it in 1 page but for higher position, like management, 2 – 3 pages will do. There is no absolute rule with this but you should consider keeping with the standard especially during tough times when hiring managers need to go through piles of application.

At all cost, never write about any personal details and pictures; this is against the law. If you have this, your resume would be toss immediately to the shredder. There’s not much to explain about this; it’s just the law unless you’re in the entertainment industry like acting.

Never write any objectives in your application since we all know you want the job; polished up your summary instead. You should omit "Reference is available upon request" since you should have this if you’ll have the interview.

With your list, you need to keep it aligned. You have to direct the hiring managers to where you want them to skim. To make it easy to skim, expand your word format; this also highlights your keywords.

Generally try to keep it clean and professional. Fonts should not be fancy or overused like Times New Roman. The key is you need to professionally stand out.

Hope this helps, and good luck.