Aditya Kothadiya’s Blog

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Targeted Audience: Students, Recent Graduates

Before you start reading
this post, I will highly recommend to first read my previous post on
top 10 things to consider while writing an effective Cover Letter. Ever
since I wrote that post, that’s one of the most popular posts on my
blog. I always knew that suggestions on writing an effective cover letter are not complete without suggestions on writing an effective resume. So this post is in continuation with my previous post about guiding students or recent graduates on their job search process.

When I was graduating,
I prepared my resume based on my opinions, previous experiences, some
suggestions from my senior friends who were in the position of hiring
other people, and also based on some of the internet’s how-to articles.
I did pretty well in getting interview calls from world’s top-notch
multinational companies, without a referral process. I roughly gave 50 interviews from these different companies. And I was successful enough to get job offers from most of those companies. That gives me
enough confidence to jot down my experiences and analysis of resume
writing process here. I also referred Penelope Trunk’s book Brazen
Careerist and my friend Avanti Ketkar’s
suggestions to write this post. [BTW, I don't recommend to buy Brazen Careerist. I will post the One Page Book Review of it soon.]

Here are the top 10
essential things that you should consider while writing an effective
(note that I didn’t use “killer” usage!) resume for job application:

1. Understand that it’s a time consuming process.
The most important thing you should understand that you need to spend considerable amount of time in writing an initial draft of a resume and then even more time in optimizing, improving and proof reading it. If you need to submit a resume for tomorrow’s opportunity and if you start working on it today, then probably you will complete the resume, but I doubt if it will be an effective one to get the required attention amongst thousand other applicants’ resumes. The best thing is to always have a resume with “in progress” status even if you don’t need it for any immediate opportunities. Writing resume is a continuous and cumbersome process and be prepared to invest considerable amount of time to gain highest rewards at the end.

2. Write it in as fewer pages as possible.
I think this is one of the most controversial aspects of resume writing process. They say that it has to be only one-page, but I don’t buy that argument completely. If its not a one page, then no body is going to kill you. So don’t worry about that “one-page” phrase. Rather, I focus more on writing my resume in as fewer pages as possible. If I am able to fit it in one page, I am awesome! But for some reasons if I am not, then I don’t give damn to all those “one-page” statements.

The key is, writing the most important points that you want to highlight on the first page. And use the second page for additional things that you want to add to get that extra mileage over other equivalent candidates. I once had written my resume 2 pages long and during one of the interviews, my interviewer didn’t even have the second page of my resume. During interview, he realized that the recruiter only gave him the first page of my resume. Luckily I had all my key information on the first page, so I was survived. This suggests that it is wise to keep it as optimum as possible.

That’s why I said, you must reiterate through your resume for literally 10 times to get the best and optimum resume. Remember, fewer pages don’t mean lesser achievements or lesser experience. It’s the art how you tell what the recruiter needs in fewer pages. Final note, if its important not to give so much importance to “one-page” phrase, then it is equally important to understand that nobody will bother to give attention to your 4 pages long resume.

3. Customize your resume for every position.
Another important thing to embed in your mind is that once written resume is not the job done. I highly suspect that your common resume will be applicable as it is to all open positions in different companies. You have to customize your resume to make it more suitable for case-by-case basis. Don’t be too honest while customizing your resume (Please also note point 8 of this post as well). You should add the exact words or phrases or close synonyms from the job position requirements in your resume. Try to match the role and position names from your previous work experience with the new position you are applying for. Of course, while customizing the title of previous position, I assume that you have worked in that capacity, and its just the title name is different in both companies. This will surely help in getting through the first scanning process.

4. Define clear Objective, brief Education background and list down your skill set.
I think it’s always useful to start your resume with defining your intentions, your areas of interest, and your full time or part time availability in the Objective section. Most of the people don’t write Objective section as they may argue that Cover Letter already does the same job then why do we need to repeat it in the resume. I agree. But when you are actually giving an interview, the interviewer (need not be only Hiring or Recruiting Manager who receives your cover letter) has a copy of your resume, and not of your cover letter. So its useful if every interviewer knows what you are looking for by reading 1-2 lines of Objective section.

After the Objective section, I will suggest to include your brief educational background in Educational section. Do mention your degree achieved, university attended, year completed, and GPA achieved if it’s good enough to highlight.

Another important thing to highlight is your skill set immediately after your Educational section. For e.g., if you are applying for a Software Development Engineer position, then you would highlight your skills under following categories:
* Programming Language
* Operating System
* Development Tools
* Soft Skills

5. Write your work experience details first.
If you have any relevant past work experience, then you should highlight it after your Skill Set section. Your educational courses, academic projects, academic research, publication work, and extra curricular achievements should be postponed to later part of the resume. Also, do not write paragraphs under your work experience details. As per Penelope, recent graduates do this mistake more often, so be cautious. Try to list down your details in the bulleted points. It’s easy to understand important things quickly for the recruiter.

6. List your achievements, not only responsibilities.
I learned this point from Penelope’s book. I really liked it. According to her, you should not just list down your job responsibilities under your work experience details. Job responsibilities are such things that everybody has to achieve them. It was a part of your job requirements to complete those responsibilities. What will distinguish you from the rest is, how well you completed those tasks. So if possible, highlight your achievements in quantitative terms. For example, I achieved 50% growth in sales of XYZ product, or I increased the performance of ABC system by 2x, etc.

7. Highlight keywords.
I am a fan of keyword highlighting. If someone sends a resume to me for referring it in my company, the first thing I do is to grasp the resume by glancing over it and make sure that it is relevant for the job opening in my company. And I do it by observing just keywords in initial few minutes. Remember, I am neither a Recruiter nor a Hiring Manager. And if I find it so boring and cumbersome to go through each line of resume, think of a Recruiter’s or Hiring Manager’s situation. They have to scan hundreds of resumes a day. And only way to catch their attention is to highlight the keywords in your resume. While highlighting, give focus on your expert skill sets, position with previous employer, achievements in previous projects and so on. It is insanely helpful to understand if someone is eligible for this job opening or not just by reading those keywords.

8. Don’t write what you cannot explain.
In point 3 of this post, I mentioned that customize your resume. But please also note, customizing your resume does not mean that you lie about your experience and achievements. I personally experienced that it is very common habit of recent graduates to boast a lot about their skill sets, technologies they know, the projects they have done to get a particular interview call. I am sure most of them must be getting that call as well, but I really wonder how many of them are able to pass the actual interview? Most of the interviews that I have given, involved explaining in detail what I have written on my resume. And if you are not able to explain fluently and confidently what you have written, then that results into loss of credibility. Irrespective of how good you did till this point of interview, once you loose the credibility, its hard to convert that interview into an offer. Multiple interviewers of a company do give feedback to each other about their experiences during your interview process. Screwing up with an interviewer on a moral front is the worst situation. So do not lie on your resume unless you are very confident about what you are writing.

9. Don’t write personal interests or references.
This is not a hard and fast suggestion. But I highly recommend not to make your resume 2 pages long just because you want to add your personal interest or references. These are not very important requirements to get an interview call. We can defer this part for the actual interview day. Once an interviewer finds that you performed good in the interview, and they may extend an offer to you, then it makes sense for them to ask if you are a great team player by understanding your hobbies, interests, and previous references. But if you already have 2 pages long resume and there is still some space left, then it might not hurt you to write about your interests and references at the end of resume itself.

10. Get enough feedback from friends and family.
As I said earlier, writing a resume is a cumbersome process. Especially when you are customizing your resume for each company, then chances of you getting exhausted are very high. It’s very likely that you will miss some errors or some more impressive ways to represent particular thing. It’s time to give the letter to a friend or family member for a proof read. Sometimes, a fresh set of eyes can pick up on things that have been missed for ages. The best thing is, you help your friends in scrutinizing their resume and also, request them to scrutinize your resume.

I hope these suggestions will be very helpful to you to prepare a compelling resume. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of suggestions. If you know some compelling tips or suggestions of resume writing, then please write it in the comment section. Your suggestions will be very helpful for students or recent graduates who are excited to start a new career. I shall keep updating my post based on your suggestions.

My best of the wishes are with you in your job search.