By Aditya Sharma
Everyone has a story to tell. These stories are what make them unique.
Your resume tells a unique story of your career. This is why a resume is often considered your career’s perfect storyteller. Without your resume, you cannot share your career story with the outside world. Without your resume, you don’t have a unique career story to tell, and without a unique career story, you may not get the shortlist that you are looking for!
This means that you need to perfect your resume to tell a unique career story.
Mentioned below are the top 5 tips that you should follow to write a resume that tells your story the way it should be told:
1. Fill out all the important sections in your resume
Your career story is incomplete without detailed storytelling of your career highlights. This includes a thoughtful presentation of your work experience, a career summary, a quick highlight of your key skills, your education background, and so forth.
The point is, every element that goes into making your career is important. You cannot afford to leave anything out.
So, we have compiled a list of the sections that you should fill in your resume to complete your career story:
· Header
· Personal Information
· Profile Title
· Summary/Objective
· Key Skills
· Professional Experience
· Education
· Certifications (if any)
· Additional Information (languages)
2. Use the Reverse Chronological Resume Format to structure your resume:
Structure and design matter when it comes to weaving your perfect story. How your resume looks goes a long way in making an impression. Thus, the structure of your resume is important as it shapes your resume and gives it a unique look.
The Reverse Chronological Resume Format is a universally acknowledged resume format for structuring resumes. It is the accepted format for fashioning resumes.
This resume format follows time from a reverse order and talks about your most recent work first, followed by the second most recent work experience, and so on and so forth.
Given below are the top 5 reasons why you should use this resume format to structure your resume:
- ATS Friendly: The reverse chronological format is extremely ATS friendly. Using this format sees to it that your resume gets correctly parsed by almost any applicant tracking system. When it gets parsed by the applicant system, the likelihood of you getting shortlisted for your dream job also increases.
- Recruiter Friendly: This resume format is recruiter-friendly and is the preferred format amongst recruiters.
- Makes your resume relevant: This format endorses your most recent work experience first. Your most recent work experience is the most relevant work experience in your work history as it is a demonstration of your most recent skills. As such, using this format to structure your resume makes your resume highly relevant.
3. Use the right font size across all sections of your resume
When it comes to writing your career story (your resume), the small details matter. Perfection lies in the details. Get the detailing right, and you would have done more than enough to perfect your endeavor.
The same rule applies to resumes too. To write the perfect resume, you need to be particular of every small detail. For instance, the font size you use is important.
Mentioned below is a list of the ideal font size for different components in your resume:
· Resume Header: Your real name is always the de-facto resume header of your resume. It features on the top-most part of your resume. This should ideally be written in the range of 18 – 20 font size.
· Profile Title: In your resume, your profile title is your most current job designation. This is the second-largest font size in your resume after your resume header. This should be written in the range of 14-16 font size.
4. Achievements over responsibilities
Imagine how boring your story would be if you are only ‘tasked’ with this and ‘responsible for’ that. There’s no action!
Action verbs, we mean. Make sure to begin all your resume one-liner points with a power verb. This simple PDF containing 200+ examples of power verbs can be used to instantly transform your resume from someone who merely does what they’re told, to someone who takes charge and exhibits ownership.
Your achievements will define your story. Make sure they are there.
5. The Summary as the final clincher
Even though a professional summary goes on the top, it is the last step in the resume writing process. It’s a snapshot of your professional trajectory and showcases the value you can deliver in your next organization. Just like any good story is written keeping a target reader in mind, the summary should be written keeping the recruiter in mind.
Don’t write a shopping list of things you are looking for – the Objective statement only works if you’re an entry level professional. In all other cases, go for a professional summary not exceeding 3-4 lines.
Conclusion:
Your resume acts as the first line of communication between you and the recruiter. It tells your career story to the recruiter. If the recruiter likes your career story, you get shortlisted. On the contrary, if the recruiter does not like your career, you do not get shortlisted.
It all boils down to one thing: Your resume is important, and you need to perfect it.
Our advice? Follow the 5 steps that we have mentioned in this blog to tell a career story that is both perfect and unique to you.
About the author: On a quest to help professionals across the world land their dream jobs, Aditya lives and breathes Hiration — a platform to help job-seekers find their way in the treacherous job market — where he’s a Co-Founder and the unofficial CPO (Chief Problem-solving Officer). He likes to code away his days and nights when he’s not busy disrupting the career space.