How to Prepare an Effective Resume for Job Interviews?
Resume building
The resume serves as a link between you and the potential employer. As a result, the value of a resume should never be underestimated. So, in order to generate a good first impression, your resume must stand out from the throng. It is entirely up to you how the hiring manager will remember you. Companies demand resumes from candidates in order to select the best candidates to work with them because they do not have much time so that they can interview each and every candidate. Generally, every firm requests your resume first, then reviews your previous work to see if it meets their requirements, and if it does, they give you a thumbs up! So, in this case, a well-written resume only accomplishes half the work for you. As a result having a well-structured and short resume is critical for making a good first impression.
Following things that your resume does:
- Your resume says a lot about you. It explains what you’ve done previously. What are you doing right now, and where are you going? Imagine a small piece of paper that has so much information about you, past, present, and future. That sounds incredible, doesn’t it? But keep in mind that this story of the past, present, and future must be told rapidly or they may lose interest. As a result, conveying a short story might be a difficult task. As a result, you may require expert assistance in preparing your resume.
- You may believe it will be simple for you to persuade the recruiter that you are the best candidate for the open position. But this is only possible you if you attend the face-to-face round. Before you go in the face-to-face interview, your resume should persuade them that you are the most qualified candidate for the job apart from the crowd.
- You can sell yourself through your skills that you’ve acquired throughout the years with a well-written resume. You can tell the recruiter about all of the abilities you’ve earned from various employment and how you want to put them to use for the benefit of the prospective company. This is exactly what today’s recruiters need to know. They want to know how your abilities will benefit their company. And if your resume succeeds in informing them of this, the goal has been accomplished.
- A strong resume summarizes your career so well that recruiters don’t have to go to the trouble of scanning and going over your resume in depth to comprehend your qualifications. As a result, make sure your resume’s summary section is powerful enough to give a good overview of your entire career in a few sentences. For those who have no prior work experience and are applying as a fresher, it is recommended that they include information about their projects, internships, industrial visits, trainings, and additional value-added courses in the summary section, so that even if a recruiter chooses not to read the entire detailed resume, the summary section will be sufficient for him to understand and assess your worth as a candidate.
Review the Job description
Read the job description carefully to see how the company has portrayed the role and the type of candidate they seek. Examine the employer’s requirements in terms of keywords and key phrases. You’ll have a better chance to impress your interviewer if you can match all those mentioned talents and qualifications for the job description. The job description may also provide insight into the types of questions an interviewer might ask. So, after reviewing the job description try to study those topics (mentioned in the JD) mainly, and also make some changes in your resume so that all the technical skills, and work experience will align with the job description.
Resume Structuring & Designing
For structuring your resume you should cover these following points:
➢ Appearance and elements
- Should be Neat and clean, without any error
- Legible and equally-spaced
- Printed on high quality paper not usual one
- Try to complete it within one page if you are fresher otherwise two pages will also work
➢ Personal Information
- Mention it on the top of the resume
- Should include your name, email & contact number
- Can also cite the links to your Github, Linkedin, & portfolio website
- It is optional but you can also write your current designation below your name
➢ About/Professional Summary
- Write a short summary about yourself within 1–2 lines
- Should be placed at top among all other sections
- Use catchy keywords to cover all the important points within 2 lines
➢ Academic Information
- Should include your university name, degree name & your specialization
- Don’t forget to mention your overall CGPA/ Percentage in front of your degree
- Can also write your X & XII class details (if required)
➢ Work Experience or Job History — Most important part of the resume
- This section shows your work that you have done during your internships either in some company or university.
- Write your work experiences in chronological order
- Your work experiences should include all the relevant info such as organization name, time period, guide name, start & end dates, location etc.
- Don’t write more than three bullet points for each work experience
- Try to mention some skills & relevant keywords that you have used in your work
➢ Projects
- Mention all those projects on which you have worked on either in your group or single handed
- Mention the name of your project, e.g: if you have developed something like a software then write the name of the software in catchy keywords.
- Also mention all those skills that you have either used or learned in your projects
- Along with your guide name you can also attach the link to your project (if possible)
➢ Technical Skills — Most Important Part of Resume
- This is the only section that interests the recruiters most because through this section you can show all your skills & competencies of your respective field.
- If you are submitting a hybrid resume then try to change all the keywords according to the job description. Because most of the time recruiters skims your resume through applicant tracking software (ATS).
- Also, try to mention the ratings in front of your skills (if space permits)
- You can also write this section before the work experience (your choice)
➢ Achievements/Miscellaneous
- Through this section you can create an all rounder image in recruiter’s mind by mentioning your awards & achievements.
- This section includes all your extra works & learnings such as position of responsibilities, volunteer experience, awards, certifications, etc.
- Don’t forget to write the catchy title because it directs the recruiter’s attention
- You can write the name of the organization or institution or school along with year
Polish your resume
As a last step, it is very important of your to check whether your resume looks unique or not. Few points you have to remember while polishing your resume such as the tenses, font type, action words & many more.
➢ Tense
Use past tense while writing the about the jobs that you have done in your past. Similarly, for wiring your current work use present tense and don’t use any kind of personal pronoun in your resume. Eg: “Developed a software which monitors the parameters of DAC plant & Maps LPS with nearest carbon storage location”.
➢ Font Type
To make your resume easy to read & screen friendly, you have to be careful while selecting font type & its size. There are some font type that works fine for hybrid resume specially for the applicant tracking software. You can use either Garamond, Helvetica, or Georgia. Keep the font size 10–12 & avoid using custom fonts.
➢ Action Words
If you use the action verbs in your resume then it becomes easy for the recruiters to understand it in their own technical language because they are using those words daily while shortlisting the resumes. For example, if you can write “Researched top 5 competitors” instead of “Searched for top 5 competitors”. Similarly, no need to write the full sentence, you can end-up by just writing the message of sentence, e.g: write “Increased revenue by 5%” instead of “this software had increased the revenue by 5%”.
Sample Resume
Top Resources to Prepare an Effective Resume
Below I have mentioned some top resources where you will find tons of resume templates according to the selected field.
Thanks for reading…
