First and most important step towards building a solid career is your resume. This is where the first impression is made about you, by the Hiring Manager. Therefore, it is important present yourself in a clean and concise manner using your Resume. In this article, we discuss how we can make your resume stand out from the rest, including tips to write a resume in 2024, and ways to improve your resume / cv.
Resume vs. CV
Resume is usually a one page summary of your skills, work experience and education, where CV is a complete diary of education, work experience, achievements, certifications and publications. If you are a professional, resume is usually the document your Hiring Manager would accept. However, tips mentioned in this article could be used to improve your resume, while using these tips to improve your CV as well, depending on your requirements. We will discuss about Tips for a good CV in a later article.
Step 1: Undertand how Hiring Manager expects your Resume to be
It is better to tailor your resume for every job vacany you apply for, rather than sending the same generic resume for every vacancy. To do this, you need to carefully review the job posting, as well as the company website. Focus on the nature of company, and their working culture and understand what is expected from you. Then, carefully decide what are the keywords you need to include in the resume. This process alone would make a considerable improvement in your resume.
Step 2 – Include only what is absolutely necessary
In step 1, you have understood how you should present yourself for this particular vacancy. Now, make sure your prioritize your skills, work experience and achievements according to their relevance to the job posting. Mentioning right skill in your resume would make sure your Resume is Standing Out from the rest, in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) as well as in the view of Hiring Managers.
Resume Tip for Freshers: If you are applying for News Reporter, your experience as a College News Reporter is a definite plus, but your experience as a Baby Sitter is totally unnecessary.
Step 3 – Add a Header, write a Summary
Even after getting filtered by Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Hiring Managers still go through a lot of resumes each day. Including a Header and a Summary would definitely benefit you, by making your resume easily stand out among the rest.
On the top of your page, add your Name, and make it slightly larger than the rest of the text. Its better to have a sub-heading also, with the exact position you are applying for. And then you can include, your City, State and Country and also your contact information including Email and Phone Number. Do not forget to include the LinkedIn URL too.
Tips for Resume: Your name is John Doe, and the position you are applying for is Full Stack Engineer. After that, your contact information.
Right below the header, write a summary about you, your objectives and skills you are bringing in to the company. When writing the summary, summarize it in a way where Hiring Managers are able to grasp an idea about your skills and experience, so they can review and learn about you quickly. Make sure your summary is limited to maximum 5 sentences.
Step 4 – Keyword Optimization
This is not only for the Hiring Manager, but also to make sure your resume will score better in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). In other words, to make sure your resume is ATS-Friendly.
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) usually compare the keywords in the Job Posting, against the keywords in your resume. Go through the job posting and find all Hard Skills (technical skills) required for the job. Make sure your resume has all these keywords in the exact same way as the Job Posting.
Tips for Resume: If the job posting has “Amazon Web Services” keyword in it, include “Amazon Web Services (AWS)” in your resume.
Not only Hard Skills, but also, you need include the Soft Skills as well, including your presentation skills, communcation skills, teamworking and leadership skills as appropriate according to the resume.
Keyword optimization not only applies to Hard and Soft Skills, but also to Education and Work Experience sections in your resume. Clearly indicate the level of the qualifications you are havinng, and also include the titles of the positions you have held so far.
Tips for Resume: Whenever you are adding an abbreviation, make sure include the Full Term as well. (MBA – Master of Business Administration)
After completing this step, make sure your resume is ATS-Friendly by scanning it against the job posting using our ATS Friendly Resume Checker.
Step 05 – Make it visually appealing, Keep it Concise
Consider below things when you are writing your resume.
Font – Make sure you use a common and a readable font, rather than a fancy one. Some good options are Georgia, Times New Roman, Bookman, Calibri or Helvetica.
Font Size – Choosing an appropriately-sized font will ensure a recruiter’s ability to read the content of your resume. Size 12 font should suffice. You can use a slightly larger size for headings.
Template – Use a minimal, but visually appealing design for your resume. But do not use graphic elements, tables and columns as most of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are not able to read through these. Also, make sure your design is not distracting the reader from the content of the resume.
Apart from above, using standard sections in your resume, such as Summary, Skills, Work Experience and Education will definetily improve your resume while making it standout from the rest.
Consider above 5 Tips for writing a resume as your guidelines, whenever you are creating or updating your resume. These 5 proven steps will definitely make sure your resume will stand out from the rest, in both Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Hiring Manager’s desk.