You’ve done a great many things in life. So it’s important to highlight all these big and small achievements of your career and showcase it to your potential employer or institution. Your resume will do that for you. SO, that’s the reason you should know how to write a good resume.
How to write a good Resume – Career Summary
- Professional summary
– industry experience
– number of years dedicated
– domain experience
You may say you have ‘10 years of work experience in the banking industry with branch operations’ – all your experience summarised in one line.
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If you have worked in multiple industries, then you should pick one or two where you have worked the most, in terms of years or achievements if you feel it’s worth highlighting.
- Personality
You must pick out two to three of your best traits and summarise them to showcase your individuality. And how will you do that? You need to go back and think about your experiences, think about the kind of person you were/are, and analyze your projects or assignments.
You could be so many things like – an effective communicator, a good decision-maker, a leader, a coach, a mentor, or a creative person. You can mention anything that describes you as a person, as an individual in just two to three attributes. But whatever you mention, be prepared with some examples and real-time experiences to back up those personality traits. You will surely be asked about how you got to the conclusion that you were all those things you mentioned as your personality.
- What are you seeking?
Here, you can tweak a little bit and make multiple versions for the different industries you’re applying to, or different roles. By the term ‘seeking’, you can mean industry, domain, or seniority level. For example, you can mention that ‘you are seeking a sales leadership role across the telecom industry’. Or that ‘you’re seeking senior management roles across different industries’ because when you’ve reached that level you can work in any industry.
It completely depends on your intent, what exactly you want to pursue in the market. It depends on the age and stage of your career.
You need to highlight all the above elements in three to four lines, not more than that. It’ll be a crisp career summary for your resume.
How to write a good Resume – Area of Expertise
The first step is to pen down all your experiences, and the objective should be to pick out 6 to 8 skills or core expertise based on your experience. You can divide this into two categories:
- Technical expertise
There could be numerous skills you’ve gained over time but here you have to pick 3 to 4 which can completely summarise your work experience.
For example
- if you’re a finance person = it could be corporate finance
- if you’re an audit person = it could be a financial audit
- if you’re a marketing person = it could be a strategic marketing
- If you’re in banking = it could be banking operations
It could be anything but it should relate to your background and it should summarise most of your work experience.
- Leadership
You must have experienced some challenges, and learned much out of it. From those experiences, you must pick out 3 to 4 attributes or leadership qualities that you think you have or which you’ve gained over the years.
For examples – after working in many projects, you might have handled many stakeholders, from your teammates to your senior management, to your C level management, so stakeholder management could be your expertise, or people management could be your expertise; coaching, mentoring, training and development could be your expertise.
You have to check everything from your background, whatever best suits you, check that as well. Areas of expertise should contain both of these elements.
How to write a good Resume – Professional Experience
Firstly, you need to mention all the details of your full-time work, part-time work, and all the internships you might have done. This is important for people starting from freshers to people with little or more work experience. And how will you do this?
- Start with the latest work: mention the company name, your designation, location, and the amount of time spent with the organization. [Do not write more than two lines on this].
- There are again two more important elements within this section namely
– job roles & responsibilities
To be honest, it’s not necessary for you to write your job roles and responsibilities on your CV as it may unnecessarily increase the length. Most companies are more interested in knowing your achievements, or the suggestions you’ve made or the initiatives you’ve taken, apart from your regular job role. Mention all your selected accomplishments. The art here is to mention your achievements in such a way that they reflect well on your jobs and responsibilities. That way you won’t have to write it separately.
You can follow our blog on this – “How to craft your accomplishments?”
For example – if you’ve worked with five different companies, you can’t make a CV in 2 pages, first mentioning all the job roles and responsibilities and then mentioning the achievements and initiatives. It’ll take you three to four pages, and none of it will make sense to the recruiter. So keep it crisp.
Educational Experience
This is quite straightforward. You can start with your latest educational degree, be it a master’s degree or something higher than that, then you move down to a bachelor’s and then school. Alongside that, mention the name of your college and university, your GPA, and year of passing. Do mention your special achievements like scholarships, gold or silver medals in academics or things like being the ‘topper’ or ‘student of the year’ titles.
Additional information may sound unimportant but it proves to be helpful to understand your character. Whatever you have mentioned so far, now it’s time to add more to it.
How to write a good Resume – Additional Information
Professional qualification
You should mention all your certifications, all the technical competencies that you have achieved over the years. It gives you an edge over other candidates. But these qualifications should be mentioned only if your job requires you to hold that kind of qualification, but it’s not restrictive to it so you can mention it if need be. Don’t forget to mention the organization that has awarded you the certificate.
Language Ability
It gives you an advantage if you understand the local language, it could be within your country or outside. So mention any and all of your language skills. Do add information about your fluency level in the language, how much do you understand, et cetera.
IT Skills
Mention everything you understand in technology, something even as basic as MS Office, or as complex as a coding language that you’ve understood or learned over time. This way your recruiters will know the limitations of the services you can offer.
Community Service
It’s not always about your work experience, they need to understand your personality as well in whatever way you present it. This is to showcase the softer side of your personality. So do mention all the projects and help you’ve provided to the society or to your community, even small volunteer jobs; it could be something as basic as a day out with underprivileged school kids. This way your application is being taken more holistically. But don’t write anything just for the sake of it. Write if you’ve actually genuinely done something, and not because you really want a particular job. You might get asked about it, leaving you in an uncomfortable situation if you’ve not actually done the said work. Your personality will be judged either way.
Hobbies/Interest
It can be anything – reading, writing, dancing. You need not be an expert in it. It’s anything you do in your free time. It’s usually brought up just to break the ice. Recruiters do want you to feel comfortable as you give your interview. It’s a way for them to see you in your natural element, in your comfort zone. You can talk passionately about your hobbies, as it’ll help you gain their confidence.
Awards & Activities
Go back to your school and college days, wherever you have won any awards or certificates, even if they are participation certificates, some excellence award for your performance, et cetera. Add those details in this section.
These 6 parameters are important to establish the different sides of your personality. But of course, you don’t need to mention all of them if you don’t have anything to put under these particular sections. Don’t lie about your previous activities as you might get caught.
We hope this is going to be helpful to craft your resume. For more guidance, feel free to connect with us and provide your feedback as well, so that we can also improve in the future.
