Five important tips for resume writing!

I am working as a recruiter for the last 5 years. Throughout my experience, I have noticed that many candidates who have uploaded there resume to the job board, they don’t mention one or the other thing. For example, some graduates have updated their profile but they don't elaborate their educational projects done or some experienced professionals don't mention their contact details. There are various things by which a recruiter can assume you as unprofessional and not worthy of hiring.

So here I am trying to advise on the points which are must to mention in the resume and try to follow the same sequence as below.

Five important tips for writing an excellent resume:

1. Your resume should consist of:

• Your name: This is a very common attribute. Everyone who is reading your resume whether a recruiter or hiring manager would like to know your name as it is your identity so please don't forget to write your name on your resume.
• Your correct contact details with your current location: Please write your correct and latest contact details on your resume. If your resume is strong skilled but you mistakenly added the wrong number it is likely to receive no calls from the company for any job opportunity so please verify your number and email before submitting your resume for any job offer. Please also mention your current location and also add your desired location as it can help the recruiter to understand what you are looking for and where you are comfortable to travel and relocate.
• You’re objective: You must have set your objective, that is your career goal. This section can be omitted but if you write this, then with the perspective of a recruiter you are visionary of your career and can prove as strong resource to the company.
• A summary of your education and experience: Even if you go for an interview, recruiter’s first question is tell me about yourself and when you introduce yourself you mention your best qualities you gain in your experience and education briefly so in a similar manner you can write about your strong points briefly in the summary section, though this is not mandatory and this can be an impressive section for any recruiter as they are getting information in short about candidate’s expertise and responsibilities they are best in.
• Your experience and achievements: If you have work experience you should mention it on your resume. Recruiters are very much interested to see your work experience, skills you have used and with whom you have worked previously. Do add your achievements too. The thing you need to remember here is you should highlight your skills and responsibility more as the recruiter will judge your work by looking at your responsibilities and skills or techniques you will mention.
• Your education and educational project: This section is important as if you are a graduate and updates your education with detailed project summary then the recruiter will be able to understand your capabilities. If you are experienced then you should add this detail after your experience section as for you, experience section is more important then this section, but this doesn’t mean education section is not important for you. This section is equally important for experienced also as this section will let recruiter’s know how you have achieved your skills and it will enhance your resume and your credibility.
• Your technical and non-technical skills: In this section, you must mention your technical skills, like the tools or software you have used, any skill related to IT or any certification done into IT will be considered as technical skills. The behavioural skills will come under non-technical skills, example team leading, confident, quick learner etc.
• Personal details: In personal details, you should mention your nationality, your gender, if you hold any other country’s visa so mention its detail, your strengths, interests and if you have any website, LinkedIn profile please mention them in this section.
• References: You must provide strong references here who can refer and present you in the best way.
• Declaration and signature: You need to give a declaration to confirm that the details you have mentioned in the resume are true and honest. You also need to self attest it i.e. sign off your resume.
• Photo (optional): You can add your photo also if you want to as this will help recruiter and hiring manager to know to whom they are speaking with and who are their future employee. This is completely on your choice if you want to paste your photo or not.

2. Use of Proper font, colour and size:

You should use a professional font for writing your resume. You must understand the importance of this document so, please keep this in mind you can’t use unreadable fonts. You can use fonts like Ariel, Calibri or Times new roman.

Your document’s font size and colours are other important aspects. The colour of the fonts must not be very bright, so choose colours wisely and the size of the fonts must not exceed 12 as it is the standard font size for resume writing. Your font size can be between 10 to 12 and not more than that.

3. Experience and education must be in chronological order.

While you add your experience and educational details please mention your latest experience on top, or your post-graduation degree or graduation degree on the top and then the following experience or education.

Recruiters always have interest in seeing what you are doing in the recent project of yours as they want their employees to be the best in the technology they are hiring for and if you don’t mention your recent experience at the top then your resume can be skipped or missed by a recruiter. Recruiter gives a maximum of 6 to 10 seconds to see the profile so if you don't write your experience or educational details in chronological order then it may be time wasting for the recruiter or your profile can be missed in an assumption that you are not having any recent experience.

4. Spell check your resume:

Before submitting your resume to any recruiter for any job role or before applying for any job, you must always check for any grammatical errors or any spelling mistake. This can give the wrong impression to recruiter or hiring manager so always do spell check and grammar check before applying for any new role or job.

5. Length of your resume:

Your resume’s length should not be too long or too short. Don’t mention any unwanted details to your profile. Try to only mention details which are related to your education and career, which will help you to get a job. If you have more than 10 years experience then you have to think which experience needs a detailed explanation of roles and responsibilities or which you can just mention with no explanation. It will help you to reduce the length of your resume and the information will be to the point. To shorten the length you can omit summary section if you sense your resume’s length is getting too long.

If your resume’s length is too short then there are chances that you might skip an important detail about your employment, education, skills or any other important factor about you. So you should keep your resume’s length reasonable and it shouldn't bore recruiter or hiring manager.

As a recruiter, I have given my viewpoints on how you should write your resume to attract more recruiters and hiring managers to contact you.

These were my 5 important tips for writing resumes, hope you all agree to it. I will be looking forward to your comments to know more about your viewpoints on this.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn at Roshni Thawani and also on Facebook at Roshni Thawani