Meeting the cut and making your mark in today’s highly challenging job market demands that your resume is nothing short of excellent. It needs to be on-point and effectively presented.
Anyone can write an average resume but not everyone can bring to life a resume that leaves a lasting impression on the recruiter. This is something you need to get the shortlists you desire for the jobs that you are targeting. Your resume needs to stand out at all cost.
This article can help you accomplish this goal.
Read on to learn the 5 essentials of a job-winning resume:
1. Choose the correct format that best compliments your professional situation
Choosing the right format for your job-winning resume is an important thing that you should always focus o
Some people have no work experience to add in a resume, whereas some people have extensive work experience but are unable to frame them in a resume. Some people also have career gaps that need to be covered in a resume.
Here are the three ideal resume formats you can choose from to best complement the professional situation that you are in:
- Reverse Chronological Resume Format: If you have no career gaps and you possess extensive work experience, then use this format to write your resume. In this format, begin with the most recent work experience, internship experience, and educational information and date it back to the oldest.
- Functional Resume Format: In this format, rather than focusing on your roles, all you have to do is emphasize your skills. Simply club your contributions across your profiles and gather them under relevant functions. Professionals who are frequent job switchers or need to cover career gaps in a resume can use this format. However, this format is not the most preferred so try and avoid using it.
- Combination Resume Format: While the reverse chronological format is preferred by recruiters, you can opt for a combination format because the weight of your skills and experience are equal in this format. This format is ideal for professionals with career gaps, those who switch jobs frequently, and entry-level professionals.
A job-winning resume needs to be framed professionally to make it stand out. Picking the most effective format can help in making that happen.
2. Scrutinize the hiring norms and update your resume accordingly
The personal information section is an important section of your resume. It should ideally present important contact-centric information such as:
- Contact Number
- Email Address
- Current Location
Apart from the above-mentioned points, it is possible that the country you are targeting has distinct hiring norms which asks for other details that are not explicitly contact-centric.
For example, countries like Germany require you to put a photo and in the middle east, it is mandatory that you give your DOB details and other such details to even be considered eligible for the job.
This is why you need to first research the hiring norms of the country where you’re looking for jobs. Based on their hiring criteria, update your resume.
3. Focus on the twin-objective of great-readability and great effectiveness to maximize the impact of your work experience
A job-winning resume is one with a perfectly composed professional experience section. Perfect this section and you’ll have more shortlists than you can keep track of.
The professional section is important because it consists of your work experience details. This information should be reader-friendly to ensure that the recruiter has no difficulty in evaluating your resume. Secondly, it should also effectively present your work experience details.
Instead of giving a moribund account of your everyday work activities, make sure that you present information in such a way that it creates an impact.
You can attain this twin-fold objective of great-readability and perfect effectiveness with the following points:
- Use one-liner points to enhance the readability of your work experience details.
- Use achievement figures i.e. numbers to show how your particular job role helped in delivering a positive outcome to various organizations.
Here’s an an example:
Project Optimization
- Directing project budgets worth USD 3.1 Million to obtain the best possible pricing for the company
- Accounting for contingencies by analyzing prime project buyout of USD 1 Billion
Composing your work details in the above-listed manner helps you to organize your professional experience points and the recruiters can easily read and comprehend your statements.
4. Identify your skills and outline them under a distinct section
To curate a job-winning resume, you need to frame an effective key skills section.
You need to devote a whole section in your resume to outline your functional skill sets to ensure that your skills are the first thing that a recruiter notices when they land their eyes on your resume.
Most recruiters are not concerned with your work experience as much as they are in your skills. If you have industry-relevant skill sets that you can effectively leverage, you might even be prefered over a professional with work experience but no skill sets to match the organizational demands.
This is why most hiring bodies are often open to hiring entry-level professionals as long as they can get the job done. Displaying your skill sets in your resume using a distinct section is the perfect way to communicate this without going too overboard.
To make the most of this section, curate this as the last second step of resume-writing. Scan through your resume to pick the most significant skills and align them objectively in your resume. If your roles are purely technical in nature, make sure that you distinguish your core skills from your technical skills.
Here’s an example of a skills on resume for a technical profile:
5. Conclude your resume with an impactful resume that advocates the benefits of hiring you
Composing an impactful resume is the need of the hour. You need to write one with as much objectivity and effectiveness as you possibly can. The goal is to get the job with a summary statement that wows the recruiters into hiring you.
Your summary should act as a sales pitch and create a good enough impact to get recruiters into hiring you. While composing a summary, mention what you are capable of doing and what you have achieved in your professional career.
The best way is to outline your career achievements without going on and on about it.
Here’s an example of a perfectly-formulated summary on resume:
“5+ years experienced Certified Content Marketer with proven success in delivering results across domains encompassing the retail, fashion, and advertisement industry. Adept at conceptualizing and executing marketing campaigns for brands with 100% satisfaction. Highly proficient in using digital marketing tactics and organic SEO practices to boost website traffic and make a product/service marketable. Lingual in the art of liaising with different departments to execute a campaign and generate revenue through well-mapped email marketing campaigns.”
Author’s Bio:
Aditya Sharma
A passionate entrepreneur, techie, and resume tactician, Aditya lives and breathes Hiration — an AI-powered online resume builder and platform to help job-seekers find their way in today’s highly treacherous job market.