Are you stuck with your 3-columned, 2 paged boring resume?
Do you want to make a resume that will stand out from all the other bad resumes on the recruiter’s desk?
Well, building a resume can be tricky and challenging if you don't have any experience in making one. Even if you have made a few, it is really tough to understand what works in a resume, what information you should put and what you should avoid.
In this blog, we'll help you explore the best practices for making a resume for a fresher and what you shouldn’t write on your resume!
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Purpose of a Resume
Now let's first understand what the exact purpose of a resume is before we get into making one. All a Resume is supposed to do is communicate to a potential recruiter who you are, what are your skills and what separates you from the others waiting to get this job.
After having conducted several interviews, we have come up with a theory called the “7 second rule” which states that it only requires 7 seconds for a recruiter to decide whether a candidate deserves an interview call or not! Your resume is supposed to grab the attention of the recruiter in those seven seconds!
Yes! Seven seconds is too less to make grab someone's attention with whatever you have achieved. And you must be already thinking of ways how you can make your resume extra attractive right at the very start. Butt don’t try to make a clickbait resume solely to grab the attention of the recruiter. Instead make a resume that clearly communicates the fact that you are a candidate that deserves an interview call!
In this article we are going to teach you a method where you segment your resume into 3 parts, constituting of your
1. Personal information
2. Professional qualifications
3. Individuality factor
Following this method of writing your resume gives it a smooth flow and speaks to the recruiter clearly about you.
Now let’s see how you can make a kickass resume in less than 30 minutes!
Personal Information
Now imagine you are at a house-party where you don't know a lot of people. But you don't want to miss out on having fun, so you decide to go talk to some new people. How would you do that?
You start out by introducing yourself and then you go into conversations about your favourite tv shows, how Game of Thrones broke your heart and your interests, your likes and dislikes.
Well, your resume should hit up the recruiter in a similar but professional manner. The interviewer has to know only your essential personal details like your name, your contact information and your email id.
If you are applying for a technical role such as IT or core Engineering job, you could add the link of your GitHub repository or your online portfolio.
If it’s a marketing or a business related role, you could also include your social media pages like your instagram or your twitter handles. This gives the interviewer an insight into your mind and work.
Your personal introduction also consists of something called the “Career Objective”. This section exists to give the interviewer an idea of what you imagine your Career path to be. It also helps them understand how that particular company can play a role in the same.
Here is an example of a kickass introductory section in a Resume :
The Candidate has also included his github profile, to give the recruiter an idea that he is serious about his programming skills and projects. The Career objective is very simple and understandable as well. It takes 2-3 seconds to scan through this.
Now let's look into the next segment.
Professional Skills and Educational Qualifications
Your professional skills and educational qualifications is the second part and it is also the most crucial part of a resume. This section consists of your technical and soft skills, your educational qualifications, your internships and projects. A lot of people make tons of mistakes in this section.
Technical Skills
A job offered by company X is very different from the job offered by company Y. To get a task done, the recruiter looks for the right set of skills for the job and that is what determines whether you would get an interview call or not.
An IT job would require technical skills like programming languages you know, knowledge of algorithms & Data structures and familiarity of web service applications.
An entry level marketing or a business based job role would require technical skills like proficiency in tools such as Docs, Sheets and an ability to make good powerpoint presentations. Sometimes great writing skills, public speaking and social skills are also a good match for this section.
The kind of skills the company is looking for, would be listed in the job description. Make sure you have a look at that and see how many of those skills you actually possess. And no matter what, Do not lie in your resume. Lying on your resume reduces your credibility and when you’re caught with that, you will not be given a job.
Soft Skills
You must have also seen a lot of people talking about soft skills.
Soft skills are skills which help you work together with people from different backgrounds. They help you communicate things clearly. These are also known as people skills. Some commonly mentioned soft skills are an ability to work in a team, good communication skills, problem solving skills, leadership skills and so on.
But make sure you are being honest in this case as well! If the interviewer reads something like “good leadership skills”, they are going to ask you something like “Where did you apply your leadership skills?”. Make sure you have a proper answer for that, or else the interviewer will lose confidence in the credibility of your entire CV and your seriousness for the job.
Languages
You can also make a separate column for the number of languages you know and how fluent you are in each language. This also falls under the category of soft skills.
Internships and Projects
The most important part is your internship experiences and projects that you have taken. Like we mentioned earlier, for a specific job, the recruiter would expect to see internships and projects relevant to the job. Writing about a marketing internship you did in your 3rd semester will not get you an interview call for an IT role.
If you have gone for a lot of internships, mention two of your best internships. These should be the ones from which you have learnt a lot from.
Let’s say you did a month long internship in an IT firm and you wrote code for an authentication checkpoint.
A bad way to describe that would be, “ wrote code for an authentication checkpoint”
A better way to put it in words would be,
- Wrote 2 code scripts for a payment page authentication checkpoint.
- Debugged and deployed it within the stipulated time frame of 12 days.
Be specific about your accomplishments in the description of your internships and projects.
Your internships should come under the Work Experience column and your projects should be separately mentioned under a Personal Projects column. Do Not mix up projects with work experience.
Educational Qualifications
If you’ve written down the necessary skills, internships and projects for the job, you already have a better resume than half the resumes out there for the same job! But there’s one more thing which you need to mention in your Resume and that is your Educational Qualifications.
It is absolutely necessary to write about the course you’re pursuing and the kind of degree you got from the college. This is important because in most cases, the employer would want to know what course you went through and if it was a 3 years course or a 4 years course. Mentioning the year you are about to complete your degree in gives the employer more information about your professional timelines.
X-Factor
We are almost there. Just one last important thing that you should add in your resume - Your X-Factor.
Your X-factor is the thing that defines and differentiates you from the other applicants who’ve applied for the same job.
You can also mention the extra-curricular activities you undertook in college. These include the clubs you were a part of and the events you have organised.
For example if you have volunteered as an Organising committee member in your College’s annual fest. Write down all the roles and responsibilities you carried, and what targets you hit. The more you write about it, the more the interviewer will ask you about it. This way you have control over what questions are being thrown your way throughout the course of the interview.
Examples : I was the captain of my college football team for 2 years and under my leadership, we won 3 out of every 5 matches we played etc.
Reasons why this is important is because this gives the recruiter an understanding of your leadership and people management skills as well.
You could also write about the various regional languages you know. This gives the recruiter an understanding of how proficiently you could communicate with your colleagues, clients, and other people in your professional network.
Editing
Once you are done filling up your resume with essential information, it’s time to edit it! Your resume is not your autobiography. If you feel you have mentioned a little too much about a certain internship experience or an extra-curricular activity you were part of, edit it out. Remember, the crisper your resume, the better!
When you’re editing your resume, you need to keep a few things in mind!
- Make sure that your resume doesn’t exceed two pages! You might have a lot of things to say but is the recruiter really in the mood to listen to everything you have to say? Only write about your best accomplishments, best internships and best certificates.
- Keep it to the point and use simple words! It’s acceptable to use a few jargons but don’t overdo it!
- Never use the same resume for two different kinds of jobs!
Always edit resumes to change it according to the requirements of the job. Submitting the resume you prepared for TCS to Zomato will make it go through the Shredder.
If you want to use a resume template to present a better resume instead of writing your own resume on Microsoft word, you could do that! Ultimately your resume should communicate your skills properly at the end of the day and it doesn’t matter whether you wrote it from scratch or used a template to simplify the job.
Here is a list of our favourite free resume making websites! You can use them to make your kickass resume in less than 30 minutes!
Resume Genius - https://resumegenius.com/
Resume maker online - https://www.resumemaker.online/
Novo Resume - https://www.resumemaker.online/
First Naukri - https://www.firstnaukri.com/resume-maker
CVMaker - https://cvmkr.com/
To read how to crack an interview, click here
We hope this article has given you a good insight on how to make the perfect resume.
It is not so easy to make the perfect resume which will land you to the interview you were looking for. The more resumes you make and attend interviews, the more you learn and get better at it.
