A resume is a medium for advertising
yourself, its the first most means which you use to present yourself and try to
claim that you are the best choice to your prospects employer. Through your
resume you have to showcase your major assets like −
- Qualifications
- Experience
- Achievements
- Capabilities, and
- Qualities
You have to prepare your resume in such a
way that it gives impression in first look that you are a perfect fit for the
job you have applied. An employer hardly takes 10-15 seconds to make a decision
about your interview call after looking at your resume. If your resume is well
written then definitely you will be in the shortlisted candidates does not
matter you have required potential or not but you will get a call otherwise
your resume will become a part of either recycle bin or dustbin, again it does
not matter if you are Einstein or Newton.
The first draft of your
resume may not be so impressive because a resume is always an evolving document
which improves over the period of time, so keep modifying and improving it
after its first draft and keep its different versions with you.
Now without complicating the things, I
will take you through step by step to create a great resume for you. I'm
assuming you have Microsoft Word to write your resume, so now just follow the
following steps −
This section will be on top of your resume
giving a detail about your name, address, phone number and e-mail address. Keep
this section left aligned and put a bold line below to the section to separate
it from rest of the document as follows −
JOHN WILLIAMS
Kondapur, Hyderabad -
INDIA
Contact No: +91 2295103049
Email Id:
john.william@gmail.com
If you are currently working then you can
specify your company name just below to your name as follows −
JOHN WILLIAMS
IT Tools India Pvt Ltd
Kondapur, Hyderabad -
INDIA
Contact No: +91 2295103049
Email Id:
john.william@gmail.com
This section will start with a heading
called Summary and followed by listing down your over-all
experience, achievements, certifications and positive attributes etc. It is
very similar to a movie trailer where editor keeps all great scenes from the
movie and after watching that trailer you get excited to watch complete movie.
You will have to choose attractive & heavy words while documenting this
section.
To draft summary section you will have to
think a while with peaceful mind, jot down great points about yourself on a
plain paper and check to make them more impressive and effective. If they are
not leaving any impact on the reader then there is no point in including those
points in the summary section.
If you are a fresh graduate then you
should specify about your small but impressive projects you have done at
university, highlight your achievements and project capabilities etc.
Let's look at one example which lists down
few points about a telecom System Software Engineer, in your case this list can
go from 2-3 bulleted points to 8-10 points.
SUMMARY
·
A System
Software Engineer graduated from Delhi University and having overall 4 years
of extensive experience in developing state-of-the-art software modules for
telecom industry specializing with BSS & OSS.
·
Core
expertise in rating and billing services related to 2G and 3G, 3G+
technologies including GSM, GPRS, VOIP, WiMax, V-SAT, VAS Services, and
Leased Lines with various access technologies.
·
A Software
Assocaite Analyst grown System Software Engineer having great experience with
all the stages of SDLC including designing, developing, testing and rolling
out complex telecom software's.
·
Exposure in
drafting and implementing different processes and have been actively involved
in ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications.
·
Result
oriented, selft driven, highly motivated, smart and hungry to learn new
technologies, methodologies, strategies and processes.
|
Because you already have given summary of
your experience and achievements, so now let's start telling about our
educational background. There are many organizations who give lot of preference
to your educational background. So it is important to tell about your academic
records. You should put your highest degree on top and then lower
qualifications at lower levels.
This is extremely important to give
information about your position, rank, percentage or CPI along with degree or
certification otherwise many employers would throw your resume in dustbin if
you don't give clear picture of your educational background. Now lets see one
example on how to put educational records in a resume.
Education Detail
·
B.Tech in
Computer Science (2005) from Ambehta University with 8.8 CPI.
·
B.Sc in
Mathematics (2002) from Meerut University with 57.20% marks
·
10+2 with
Maths, Stats (1999) from U.P. board with 67.20% marks
·
High School
(1997) from U.P. board with 77.20% marks
·
Secured
first position in statistics during B.Sc.
·
Gold
medalist at 10+2 level due to highest rank in mathematics.
|
If you have done various
certifications and trainings then I would recommend to add a separate section
for Trainings & Certifications just below to Educational
Section.
Next section in your resume will present
your Technical Skills. This section will start with telling your major skills
on which you have good command. So list down all the skills first where you are
fully confident and then keep rest of the skills at lower levels. Have a look
at the following example where candidate has good command over Pro*C and C but
less experienced in Perl so put Pro*C and C first and Perl later. This is
important to note that all the lines given below are not required in all the
cases. If you know only one skill then just tell about that skill, for example
if you don't have any experience in any protocol then don't give that line in
your resume
Technical Skills
·
Programming
Languages: C, Pro*C, C++, JAVA and PERL
·
Operating
Systems: Red Hat Linux 9.0, Windows XP and Solaris 2.0
·
Tools &
Technologies: Front Page-2000, CGI, J2EE, JSP, CORBA
·
Databases: MySQL, Sybase
·
Protocols: SMTP, FTP, PO3, IMAP
·
Others: Socket Programming, Multithreading,
SDLC, OOP, UML
|
Here comes real story and this is really
important to show your all the projects, assignments etc. Reader should
understand what exactly you have done in past. Here you will put hands on
experience with different type of projects, people and tools and technologies.
You have to be clear on what was your, organizations, year of the project,
roles, responsibilities, value add, achievements etc. on each and every project
or position. You should also mention about what were the tools and technologies
you have used during that project.
If your experience is not project based
then you can simply name this heading asExperience Detail and list
down all the experiences either in buletted form or in simple & short 2-3
paragraphs.
You will start with the most recent project
and continue listing down all the projects till the oldest one. If you have
done only training project or thesis project then you can mention those
projects along with your University projects in the same format. Here I will
give examples of two projects −
Projects Detail
1 - Library Information System [National Library, NY,USA ]
This system simplifies day to day
operation of a library which enables you to maintain library catalogue on
electronic media and to keep a record of all the issued books in a particular
day. Using this system, a user can generate a report of all the available
books for a particular subject or ISBN and a report can be generated for all
the issued books for a particular subject or ISBN.
2 - Tiny
Editor Implementation [Aligarh University, UP, INDIA]
This was a small but useful text file
editor which enables you to edit any text files available on Linux System.
Using this editor user can open new or an existing file in text mode and can
update its content and then finally that file can be saved on hard disk.
|
After giving a complete detail of all the
projects, now you can tell about your major strengths. Look at the following
examples, may be you don't have all the strengths so list down only whatever
you posses −
Strengths
·
Good oral,
written & presentation skills
·
A high
tolerance of stress and enjoys responsibilities
·
Quick
learner with good grasping ability
·
Action-oriented
and result-focused
·
Lead &
work as a team in an organized way
·
Great time
management skill
|
This section is optional because it is
always not necessary that you would have been involved in some extra curricular
activities same time for various roles its not required to have any extra
curricular. Some time this section may have lot of weightage specially when
your resume reader and you have same curriculum. I'm giving you a simple
example to list down your curricular activities
Extra Curricular
·
Have been a
member of University Technical Council
·
Won first
prize for debate at inter state level competition
·
Played
Cricket at inter state level
·
Mono
acting, Singing and Reading
|
This will be the last but mandatory
section of your resume but will provide all important information about you. A
simple and easy example is given here −
Personal Detail
·
Date of
Birth: 5th Aug 1983
·
Sex &
Status: Male & Single
·
Nationality: INDIAN
·
Languages
Known: English, Hindi, Urdu
·
Passport
Number: A09384848 valid till 2018
|
Now you are done and you have a great
resume in your hand. Let me put all the sections together in a word document to
prepare a final resume. You can download Sample Resume from
here and you can modify this resume based on your experience, skill etc. In
fact resume building is an evolutionary process and your resume will get better
and better over the period of time.
I will recommend to go through the
following tips to add lot of value into your resume.
·
Keep
your resume file name short, simple and informational. A good resume file name
could be like JohnWilliams-Resume2013.docx
·
You
can keep a small passport size photo at the top-right corner of the resume but
this is really not required.
·
Don't
use various unnecessary formatting in your resume. Keep simple text as much as
possible in your resume. Have a look at sample resume. You will find many HRs
who prefer resume only in simple text format. So if you will keep resume
formating simple then it would be easy to format that resume in any format.
·
Don't
include too many phone numbers, email addresses or addresses.
·
Don't
prepare too big resume. It should be as precise as possible.
·
Always
give a summary of the resume at the beginning.
·
Always
give a detail of roles and responsibilities you have taken during any project.
·
Make
sure the resume is neat, free of typing errors, and on plain white paper.
·
Never
give a reason for leaving your previous job, your salary expectations, your
current job challenges etc, and better to leave such points to be discussed at
the time of interview if required.
Hope you enjoyed reading all the above
instructions and we at tutorialspoint wish you very best of luck.
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