Your resume is the first steppingstone to your dream job. If your resume is not well written and formatted, your profile can get rejected just because of your resume. In this article, I provide you 10 tips which will be super-usefull to you.

Make it short!

No-one likes reading essays these days. If your resume is more than 2 pages, I can confidently say that some important points in your resume are likely to be missed by the recruiter.

Ideally would prefer resume not more than 2 pages. To be honest, I really liked reading one pager resumes. It looks neat and clean. It also saves time of the recruiter.

Photo Adds Connection

Do you feel disconnected talking to someone you don’t know and the video is turned off? Seeing your face makes the other person feel connected to you during your conversation. This rule also applies to the recruiter who is going to screen your CV.

You may argue that it is not mandatory to add a photo and more emphasis needs to be given to the skills than a photo, but you can’t deny that adding a photo makes your CV looks professional and gives you psychological advantage.

Limit to 3 recent Projects

Recently I came across a CV of a candidate having more than 9 years of experience. The person had worked on 6-7 different projects in his career and included them all in his CV. This made his CV not only bulky but also made me skip some of the parts which may be valuable.

I would personally prefer to include your 3 recent/important projects which are relevant to the position I am applying for. This also helps to keep CV short and sweet. Also, if there are more to mention, you can mention it during interview.

Prefer Roles over project description

Your recruiter will be less interested in your project structure or functionality unless he wants to evaluate your understanding of the project. The important thing for the him is to understand what have you really done as a part of the Team. He will mainly focus on understanding whether your roles and responsibilities align with the requirement or not.

So, it makes sense to keep the project description short emphasizing more on your contributions to the project.

Be Honest

Your CV acts as a first door to the get you to your dream job! Never ever try to manipulate your CV to match to the job description. It may help you get your CV screened through, but may cause issues during interview.

Your interviewer may or may not be able to catch your manipulations, but if realized, it puts a big red flag on your profile. I have seen people claim to have worked on something, but reality they may have just read about it. Your recruiter can catch this within no time, so please avoid doing such things.

Aligning your resume with job description

Job description (JD) is something you should read carefully before applying for the job. It contains exact requirement for the position. Aligning your CV with job description doesn’t really mean putting fake points. All it means is highlighting the things you know that matches JD. It helps to bridge the gap between recruiter’s expectation and what you have in your kitty.

To achieve this, you can

1. Change the order of the skills
2. Include projects that match JD in your CV
3. Include some of the JD points in your intro itself

Again, only if you really have knowledge of the items you have mentioned in the CV

Prefer Bullets over paragraphs

Quite self-explanatory! No-one likes reading long paragraphs unless it’s a novel 😊Your CV should be neat, clean and to the point. Try to convert paragraphs into easy-to-read bullet points.

Certifications

You should always try to look out for Certification exams that are related to your expertise. It improves your selection chances. Also, you also get to learn the depth of the area and improve your knowledge.

All the relevant certifications should be added to your CV to make your CV stand out.

Accolades

Don’t forget to include any accolades or appreciations you have received from your organization. It could be simple Pat on the Back or Achiever of the quarter. Try to mention the reason alongside the accolade. It definitely adds good weightage to your CV.

Omit irrelevant information

In order to reduce the size of your CV and also to make it easy-to-read, you should always try to remove below items from your CV –

1. Skills that are totally irrelevant for the job, like mentioning MS Excel for developer jobs
2.  Initiatives you took part in college days, unless you are a fresher
3. Personal information like religion, caste, place of birth (can add Date of birth) etc.
4. Projects that you worked on years back and irrelevant to the position

I hope these tips will be helpful for writing better resume. If you don’t like writing your resume in word document, then here are some useful tools that can help you write well formatted resumes. These tools offer templates that can save your time!

1. Zety (https://zety.com/)
2. Indeed (http://www.indeed.com)
3. Canva (http://www.canva.com)