Creating a recruiter friendly resume

Do you want to know how to make your resume “recruiter friendly” and more accessible ensuring a higher chance of being reached out to.

In simple words, your resume should be easy for a recruiter to skim through for important information.

 Here are a quick few tips. These may seem vanilla, but speaking from personal experience, still stand important from a recruiters view. 

1.First things first, the name and contact co-ordinates must reflect right at the beginning. It's easier to sight and quick to retrieve / dial, rather than looking left/right/ bottom or even the footer sometimes

 2. Please, do capture your current location at the top, and if possible the permanent address location too.

It’s not always easy to figure the location ,viewing the phone number. Also positions where the organisation prefers a local candidate it makes it easier to get on with the next steps than figuring out the base location with a call.

How does permanent address help?

Well if the permanent location is where the vacancy is, then there’s a high chance that you will receive a call assuming you might be open to relocating to where your family /home town is.

Also you may consider adding a tab of preferred location in case you are open to several cities.

 3. A lot of people mention about their career objective/summary in a way that it turns out to be pretty subjective eg. usage of words like great at interpersonal skills, highly motivated, quick learner, great leadership qualities and so on.

These are mostly competencies which in effect can be gauged through personal conversations and understanding. Hence may not be of much help.

Worthwhile mentioning skills which are quantifiable (eg PMP certified if looking for project manager role or six sigma black belt champion if looking for a quality role etc) and what kind of position you aspire to get into by virtue of the same.

 3. Goes without saying spell checks, grammar and punctuation marks are sacrosanct when creating a great resume.

 4. Please try to put the month and year of each tenure for the organisations worked with.

I am a stickler for the same when assessing a resume as also do avoid possible mistakes/ overlaps in the tenure. Helps gauging the stability and ascertaining gaps if any as well as to make notes prior to the conversation.

 5. With technology folks, please stick to the important and very important projects if possible (with the organisation name and tenure), keeping it relevant to the next assignment you are seeking. Otherwise it extends pages after pages and may not look professional.

 Further while some do it, it’s helpful to share a short snapshot of all the organisations worked for along with the tenure clearly presented at the beginning before breaking down the experience on your job responsibilities.

 6. Do optimize your profile for the right keywords to get a better hit ratio. Look for alternatives that can be used in your industry for eg. migration and transition, in healthcare payor/payer/claims adjudication, in quality - six sigma ,process excellence, transformation, transaction quality/quality assurance and so on.

 And yes don’t forget to convert/publish your resume on pdf.

 These are just a few tips, of course there’s no absolute right or wrong and each of you would have your own style of presenting.

 Do leave a comment if you think they seemed helpful.

#resumetips, #resume, #recruiter, #CVcreation