Tips For Writing A Great Resume

In this article, I’m going to be sharing some useful tips that you can use to make a great resume. We’re going to establish five sections that should be on a resume. Before we proceed, I want to say that there is no top way to do a resume. You can go online to find resume advice, but you’re going to hear a lot of different opinions from different people.

Purpose Of A Resume

Think about the purpose of a resume. A resume is a brief summary of your skills, achievements, and experience, and how it fits into the job you’re applying for. The goal of your resume is to get in front of a hiring manager so you can explain in detail why you’re the best person to hire. Your resume is an advertisement, but we all know that advertisements come in different forms. So there’s no set way, but there are things that should be on your resume.

Tips And Sections

Let’s get into the tips and sections that you should have on your resume. First, you should have your name and contact information in the first section. If you’re submitting your resume to a specific company, it should include your phone number so they can call you for an interview. Now, if you’re posting your resume online for an employer to find you, don’t list your phone number, because you can get spammed. If you have a portfolio include that too, because it can impress an employer. Samples of your work shows the employer what you can bring to the table.

The second section of your resume should be your work experience. One thing I’ll say about this section is that you should be putting your most relevent experience first for the job you’re applying for. This means that you should be tailoring your resume for every job that you apply for. This tip is important for students and new graduates, because you most likely had memorable internships that you could put on your resume. The most important thing to understand about a resume, other than it’s an advertisement is that recruiters don’t have a lot of time to look at it. Keep in mind, when a resume gets to a recruiter’s desk it’s probably among a huge stack of other resumes. The average resume only gets six seconds of the recruiter’s attention before he or she moves on to the next resume.

Achievements

Third, when you’re listing out your job descriptions, highlight achievements rather than duties, and if you can provide numbers with those achievements do so. Hiring managers are not that interested in what your duties were on your last job. They’re more interested in what you accomplished.

Education

All right, let’s move on to the education section of your resume. If you’re in college, or if you just got out of college it makes sense to put your education section before your work experience, especially if you’re trying to get into companies that put a lot of value on education. Generally, experience is going to matter more to companies than your education, especially for new companies that have something to prove.

Skills

Now, lets talk about the skill section. Do you need to have a skill section on your resume? It depends on who you are. A skills section is useful if you have specific certifications and skills that the employer is looking for. Do not list soft skill terms like hard worker or good communicator, because the laziest person in the world can do that.