After having written thousands of resumes, we can say with confidence that when it comes to your resume, it can either open the doors for you or decelerate your career growth.
It becomes all the more important if it manages to beat the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and is strong enough at the same time to get through the manual screening of the recruiters. With new technology at their disposal, the recruiters stay on top of their game and search for the best talent out there on the market. Your resume has 6-8 seconds to make an impression and if it manages to do it, it finally gets through the initial stages and enters the hands of the decision-maker.
Team CVGUYS has investigated the recurrent errors in resumes, validated them by our experience and feedback from thousands of recruiters and hiring managers. And here we make life easier for you by letting you in on the ‘15 easy steps to get an Amazing Resume’
1. Summarizing
On your resume, nobody cares about reading the goals. Replace a rundown of a crisp career with it. Summarize the credentials that you have received during your years of experience. Bring the most marketable skills and experience, but concise to 5-6 lines, into this portion. This should provide the reader with a fair indication of who you are and what you bring to the table.
2. keywords
Medium and large corporations rely a lot on Applicant tracking Systems to do the screening for them. Keywords are the foundation on which the ATS functions and, thus, the keywords on your resume and repetition of those keywords are the key to guaranteeing the correct visibility of your resume. Reflect on aspects that you have achieved during your career schedule, review the roles and obligations that you have done, including the strengths and niche that you have acquired over the years. These become the main keywords which, at a glance, the hiring managers or decision-makers should be able to assess the strengths and fitness for a particular profile.
3. Some things are not for the resume
If you feel any portion of your resume is going to be meaningless to the manager of the decision-hiring maker, have it deleted. Your career ambitions or your desires are yours and not relevant for the purpose of a resume. Or the references that come with you. If the next employer wants references, they will ask for it. So, there is no need for you to have them on your profile.
4. No negativity
Your resume is the last place where you would like to say anything negative. You may have this desire to mention why you had to leave the last company. The reasons for this may vary from being laid off to not being paid. But your resume is not the place to mention it.
5. Make it presentable
We've seen thousands of resumes that use multiple fonts or use font combinations. Many of which are not justified. You must make it presentable because it is the first impression that your resume makes. The use of fonts and graphics can be fully retained for another debate, but it is crucial that your resume is easily readable. To guarantee this, use standard fonts and font sizes. Limit the use of fonts that have been downloaded or fancy fonts. Explain or align segments to preserve the formatting, and eventually save it in PDF format.
6. Keep it brief
Don't bother to load up your resume with long job descriptions. Stick to the aspects that the hiring manager wants you to read and conclude. State only the parts that make you the best option for the job for which you are applying. The feedback we got from many recruiting executives indicates that they seem to lose interest and discard profiles that are not structured or to the point.
7. Matters of Tense
Using tenses in your profile should be given the utmost priority like the aspects that you have dealt with in your previous experience in the past and incidents in your current profile in the present tense. Give the reader the feeling that you did it, which gives more faith to the reader than someone who said they knew how to do it.
8. Modifying is acceptable
For any employer, it is difficult to have designations or job titles that actually represent the work that one does in today's traditional organizational frameworks. So, if you feel like your work title does not reflect your actual job, it is fair to adjust it to suit the real job you are doing. For example, instead of your current Level 2 Associate role, a Business Analyst may be written. This way, the one who screens your profile against the job profile they are trying to hire for will easily match it with your profile.
9. Format
Not only is it pleasing to the eye to format the resume, but it also makes it easier for the recruiters to find the details they are looking for. Avoid using tables, however, as the use of tables may lead to a lower score when it comes to ATS screening. Most ATS engines do not take the data in the correct format while parsing when the data points are formatted in tables.
10. Rechecking And Checking
For your resume, make it seamless. It is fine to get it reviewed by a third-party. Spell analysis, grammatical mistakes, compatibility with ATS. It is important that your resume is 100 percent ATS compatible for you to have a chance of getting to the next level of interviews. Don't depend on automated spell checkers, they usually let you down in significant ways. Get a manual analysis done and, if possible, get it done by experts.
Hope these steps help you create the right resume.
Wish you tons of success!
Still not sure how you can make an amazing resume yourself.
No reason to fret. Team CVGUYS will be glad to help.
Just contact us and we'll take care of it for you.
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