A resume also called as curriculum vitae (CV), is a document that enlists and summarizes all your career related activities. This document should not be too short, or too long. It should be simple and not be a bulky. Ideal resume may have of 2-3 pages, increasing in number of page(s) can make it bulky and there are more chances professional rarely turn beyond 2-3 pages. Your resume should work as a catalog and it should highlight your strongness. A resume explains a lot about particular’s personality beyond their skills set, expertise, or achievements.
A resume must be error free, clean, simple formatted, summarized but complete. A resume can be a primary factor of selection or rejection of a profile.
While writing an effective resume, you should keep following things in your mind:
1. Simple: Avoid extra formatting, keep your resume simple and systematic. Eliminate typo errors, spelling and grammatical mistakes. Proper page margins with alignments are good to format your resume.
2. Fonts: Use common fonts and avoid uncommon fonts. Many times, font you have used may not available to employer’s system and therefore, they may not able to read your resume properly. Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial, Tahoma etc. are few common fonts those generally available in all computer systems. Therefore, using such common fonts will be always fruitful.
3. Header and/or footer: Try to add header/footer in your resume that/those should include name, page number etc. These do not give any extra weightage to your resume but increase the presentational skill.
4. Format: Create and save your document in general formats as - .doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf etc. Avoid latest or higher version of document format. Consider if viewer does not have the respective compatible version of software, they never will able to view you resume.
For example: resume built in Apple document or Google document does not support by Microsoft documents and vice-versa.
5. Colors and font size: Resume should not be colorful. Standard 1-2 colors and standard font sizes are okay to use. Headline you can make bold with normal paragraph. Avoid multi colors, images etc. A clear and professional passport size photograph is good to add at top on first page of your resume.
6. Order of resume: Always follow reverse order in your resume i.e., latest things always should be on top.
7. Signature: Good to add full name with date and place at the end of your resume. The date and place indicate your location and last date of updated resume. If it is too old, recruiter will reach out and ask you to send updated resume.
8. Resume statements: It should always be clear and meaningful. Avoid confusing and tough words, it is not necessary that resume selectors are as strong in vocabulary as you. Nobody wants extra criticality; your resume may get reject if recruiter unable to understand it clearly.
9. Duplicate items: Avoid repetition or duplicate items in resume. Make it clear and to-the-point, avoid extra explanations.
10. Resume length: Many times, I have seen candidates prepare resume having 6-7 pages, and even more. Believe me, nobody has time to read your 6-7 pages resume, everybody wants simple and summary of your curriculum. Try to summarize your resume in to 2-3 pages, big resume may lead to rejection.
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