How to write a Professional Resume from Scratch

Introduction:

Resume is the most important tool for job seekers to project their experience and skills that are matching with the required skills in the Job.

If you ask whether the resume can get you a Job the answer is NO, But hiring managers use resume as screening tool to identify the potential candidates for their requirements.

Resume is tool that helps you to get an interview with the manager and not the Job. Job seekers should make sure that the first impression is made on the resume itself.

You resume will be scanned in less than 15 to 20 seconds by the recruiter or by the hiring manager that means you resume should be very clear and attractive to the potential employer.

Master Resume

Effective resumes and attractive resumes will get you more interviews. Job seekers should prepare Master resume before preparing the resume that you use in the Job market.

Master resume should contain the complete details about you, from the school to the present. Your accomplishments, all activities, awards, training/course taken/workshop attended etc

The purpose of the master resume is to have all valuable information about you in a document that in turn helps you to prepare an effective resume for the Job.

Once you recall all your data, organize the data in proper way and put it in an orderly manner in your master resume. Don’t use the master resume for any interview that you attend

The master resume is for your own purpose. You need to prepare a customized resume for every Job application.

Basics about Resume:

Resume should be short and understandable for recruiters and hiring managers. The resumes are scanned by recruiters in less than 20 seconds.

If you are a fresher or less than 2 years’ experience Job seeker make sure your resume is not more than 2 pages. The short resume with more details is the most appropriate resume. We always want to show all our accomplishments and work but in Job market you need to give only the information that the manager wants not all that you want to tell.

Your objective should be very clear and straight. Don’t give any general objective that misleads the manager. The objective should be specific and it should tell the manager that you are looking for a role that he requires.

Your resume top should contain your Name, Email, Phone Number (use +91-xxxxxxxxxx format) and present address.

Your education and employment should be in chronological order (Recent education/employment should be on top and followed by others).

The employment details should have duration of employment which includes month and year. It should include the location where you were employed and title of the job.

Education details should contain college name, Course study, Location, and year of passing and the percentage you scored.

Don’t leave unnecessary spaces between each topic. At the same time make sure you give required space between each topic.

The appropriate layout that can be used will be: Size: A4, Margins: Narrow, keeping space after and before as 0 and Line spacing as single.

Use appropriate headings and subheading and highlight the important headings.

Make sure that your resume doesn’t look clumsy. At just a glance the manager should be able understand your profile. So your headings and sub headings really matters.

Don’t try to fake or hide anything on resume. Hiring managers and recruiters are clever enough to find it in the first look, though if they miss they will find it while in the process of hiring.

Simple and neat resume attracts many recruiters and managers. By seeing your resume they should be able to understand the profile and your skills.

It is not necessary for experience professionals to add Declaration at the bottom.

Whenever you give the hard copy of your resume to the HR or the manager, make sure that have signed at the bottom of the resume.

Before printing your resume, make sure you do a spell and grammar check. Silly grammar mistakes will cost you a rejection.

Don’t give unnecessary personal details. DOB, Gender, Address, Languages known is more than enough.

Your resume can be thrown in trash if your resume is not in proper format.

Customization of Resume:

In the Job market you cannot market yourself with a same resume for all jobs. Though your profile might be same the needs and responsibilities from organization to organization changes accordingly you need to customize your resume to organization needs.

The job seeker cannot use the same resume for all the Jobs he/she will be applying. Use customized resumes for your Job application.

The basic fact is the required skills for the job should match with the skills that the candidate has. So it is important for you to read the Job description clearly before applying for any job.

You should be able to identify the key points and keywords in the Job description. Make sure that your resume has those points that are required for that Job. Including keywords from the description is very important in today’s market the reason for that is, today many major MNC companies use software’s to filter the candidate resume.

It means the software will be fed with certain keywords that is required to do the Job, though you might have the same skills and you might have done the same job if your resume doesn’t have those keywords in the Job description your resume will not be filtered by the computer software that means you lose an opportunity for no reason.

If you have used those skills on your projects then mention it in your projects and tell how you have used those skills.

The objective on your resume should match with the job title on the Job description for example if you are applying for jobs in advertising then don’t mention that you are seeking a career in Marketing. Be more specific. Hiring managers are more interested on candidates who knows what they want and that should match exactly with their requirement.

If you have experience then make sure that your job titles on the resume are more specific instead of general titles.

For example, if you are a Java developer then mention your job title as Java developer instead of software engineer though it might be your Job title in your organization. The reason for this is no recruiter will search resumes by using “software engineer” as keyword as software engineer means everyone who develops software but the manager want someone who has done software development in Java. So using title as java developer is more important.

Instead of Marketing executive you can use online marketing executive if you are an online marketing professional

Highlight your accomplishments on the resume:

Highlighting the important points in the resume is the key for getting an interview. Make sure you highlight the right point. Highlighting the unnecessary points leads to bad impression. Highlighting helps to make sure the manger didn’t miss anything important in his/her first look.

If you are a fresher then you need to highlight your project work which relates to work, Mention the responsibilities that you had on the project and your accomplishments on the project.

Highlight the skills and tools that you have used to complete the project.

If you have a voluntary work that you have done for example if you have created a website for your college event then you can highlight those with the tools that you have used on that project

Highlighting the accomplishments in your previous employment is very important to show that you have done great work. Candidates in marketing field should highlight the revenue generated by them for the organization.

Team leaders and managers should highlight the team size that they managed in the previous employment.