TIPS FOR PREPARING THE BEST RESUME

A well written resume is vital to your career success
So here are some tips on how to write a better resume:


Objectives

Your resume has two objectives:


To secure an interview by quickly showing that you fulfill the job requirements as described in the job advertisement or by the recruitment agency.

To act as a prompt for the interviewer by providing the details that back your claim to be a preferred candidate.


Remember: Your resume does not get you the job - just the interview.

Attributes


Your resume should enable the person screening a pile of them to quickly ascertain the salient points that will decide whether you are a potential candidate.

At the same time, it should also contain the detail that will interest an interviewer. To fulfill these attributes, it must be easy to read.

Layout

The standard way to layout a resume is as follows:

Start with your personal (Brief) details: name, phone numbers and email address at the top, i.e. above the objective.

Mention the objective.

Continue with your expertise summary. It is vital that you are conscious of the skills and experience required by the position for which you are applying and weave your own experience of them into your narrative.

Continue with your educational qualifications, professional qualifications and skills including software and methods.

Follow this with your experience in reverse chronological order. List employers, dates and your title. Describe the skills and methods you used and your achievements.

End with interests and hobbies but be careful: candidates with a consuming hobby that could interfere with the business day, might be avoided.

If needed give more Start with your personal details: address, gender , etc., and end.

Many recruiters advocate that your resume fit onto two pages but don't feel constrained by this if you genuinely need more space to relate your key skills and experience where they coincide with the requirements of the position for which you are applying.


Bespoke

It is essential that your resume clearly demonstrates your suitability for the position. So, consider producing a separate resume for each application that directly addresses a match between the skills and experience required and offered. The overall content may be the same but you could put your most relevant skills and experience first.


Typography

Your resume may only have a few seconds to impress the scanner before being relegated to the failed pile - also called the bin. So it is of paramount importance that your resume can be easily and quickly read. Achieve this by following some simple guidelines:


When word processing your resume, save it in Rich Text Format (RTF) to ensure that someone without your word-processing software can easily open and read it. PDF documents can also be read by anyone who has the ubiquitous and free Adobe Acrobat Reader but remember that readers will not be able to edit your Curriculum Vitae, which may or may not be desirable.

Use black ink printed on a quality bond paper.

Your resume must be easy to read fast. You can achieve this by the use of wide margins so that each line of text has no more than about 70 characters. Think about newspapers that print in quite narrow columns that can be read by scanning the eye down rather than from side to side. Conversely, narrow margins with wide lines mean that the eye struggles to move to the next correct line when the distance from the right side back to the left is too far. Try top and bottom margins of about ¾ inch or 20 mm with left and right margins of 1¼ inches or 33 mm.

Don't mix lots of font sizes. Either use one size throughout - 11 point is a good choice - or use a font one point larger for heads and subheads.

A word-processor is not a typewriter, so don't use the space bar to align text. Set proper stops instead. This will also make it easy if a recruiter needs to amend your resume to a standard house style because stops can easily be adjusted whereas unnecessary spaces take ages to remove.

Don't use underlining or ALL CAPITALS. They are old-fashioned, look like shouting and belong to the typewriter age when they were the only way to highlight text. Instead, use bold, italic or bold italic but do so sparingly.

Above all, leave plenty of white space. Firstly, it makes your resume easier to read. Secondly, it gives the interviewer room to write notes.