Most resumes are nothing more than a collection of facts about your past. This becomes boring no matter how extraordinary you are. As a best practise, we should be putting hot stuff in the beginning, and all this information afterwards. Pasted below are few tips –
1. Don’t over-complicate things – A resume does not need color, fancy fonts, borders etc unless you are in the creative industry. All a resume needs is Summary of Qualifications, Education and Certifications, Work Experience and Technical Skills (in case of a technical job role).
2. Does not use resume templates or tables – Recruiters/Consultants will often need to modify your resume before submitting it to the concerned – whether it’s to add their company logo, remove contact information, or edit the resume content. Resumes in tables are comparatively hard to change without destroying the formatting.
3. Remove irrelevant work experience / achievements – When applying for a role, we need to clearly go through the Job Description and basis the same, articulate the work ex that is relevant with the role you are applying. You don’t need to include for example retail work from several years ago once you have a few years of relevant experience in your industry.
4. State your most important points first – If you have more work experience than education, place the work experience section above the education – but be sure to mention your degree in your summary of qualifications to make sure recruiters don’t overlook it.
5. Use Times New Roman or Arial font, no smaller than 10 point – Set your margins no less than .5 inches all around and don’t change the page setup from Letter size paper – Despite the technology, a lot of recruiters still print resumes. The idea that a resume must be in sans serif font (without bold or italic text) to be accurately “read” by a resume database ATS. If you’re submitting a resume online, Times New Roman will work just fine.
Delete the objective and “references on request” statements. If you’re applying to a job, your objective is obvious. If your resume is posted on a job board, a recruiter can infer your objective from your previous experience. Often, an objective can disqualify you from certain positions if it’s too narrow. We should only include an objective if you’re looking to change careers. As far as references are concerned, recruiters assume you will provide them if asked; and therefore this line should be avoided.
