Looking for a job, feeling enthusiastic and confident with your experience. Great. But now comes the hard part: deciding on the form of the resume you have to present to your potential employer. And so many questions pop up in your head: Is your resume too short? Will your resume bore the interviewer? Did you manage to make your professional experience be relevant for the job you are applying for? Did you accidentally slip a grammatical error? Sound hard, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be and we are here to help. Follow these ten tips for a successful resume and maybe you will get called in for an interview. The most important thing to remember is to MAKE YOUR RESUME UNIQUE! You want to stand out amongst all of the other applicants, so be remarkable!
1. Simplicity
A resume is the first and probably last chance to ensure your interview. Therefore it is extremely important that your resume can work in your favor and not vice versa. Use it to draw attention to your work power, on your accomplishments, and on technical knowledge.
2. Achievements must prominently portrayed
It is very good to use a series of active verbs such as “I realized”, “I planned”, “I organized”, “I was responsible for”, “I drove” etc. It is not advisable to use all kinds of signs for organizing ideas, a resume can be easier to read if presented in cursive writing.
3. Reverse chronology
When you start to complete the experience section, you have to start with the last job and then continue in the same reverse chronological order with these, not forgetting to mention the name of the employer, start and end of the job, job title and a brief description of thereof, plus your accomplishments. If you are looking for your job first, then complete any relevant experience, paid or not (volunteer work, tutoring).
4. Sincerity
If you lie in a resume, not only you do not any good for yourself, but at the same time you make the prospective employer lose time without meaning. Adding 6 months experience in a job may seem like a good idea, but if the information is verified, be sure you will never get the job. But do not sell yourself too cheap! If you think that the three summers that you spent in France, working as a volunteer, helped you to know the country and its culture, then say it.
5. IT skills
You have to write absolutely everything you know how to do in the field of computers: knowledge of hardware, software, programming terminology, databases etc. Do not mention things that have not done in a while, or worse, that you never did. If during the interview you are asked about a specific term (in case your interviewer knows what he is talking about), you will look ridiculous, not knowing what to answer.
6. Education
Pay equal attention to your accomplishments during college. Be careful: this is not relevant if you have been working the field for more than two years.
7. Organize your resume
Do not cram your resume and do not keep it just under a page, even if you have something to say. If it’s 3 pages long, it’s not a problem as long as the content is relevant to the job to which you have applied. If the prospective employer will bother to read your resume, he will quickly lose interest.
8. Grammar mistakes
No employer will look for a person who did not even bother to correct their own mistakes. Do not count on a quick viewing of your resume, read it over and over again, two or three times very carefully.
9. Two pairs of eyes
After you’ve checked the resume yourself a few times, ask someone to read your resume because an unaccustomed eye with this material can easily detect mistakes. Do not try to fill in your resume only at one time, always come back to it and check it after a few days.
10. References
Check your references before you use their name. There’s nothing worse than using the name of a person who either moved or has something against you. The best people you can use as references for your resume can be your present employer or college or high school teacher, or maybe colleagues and the NGO you’ve volunteered for a while back.
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