My basic rules in preparing my resume.

A resume or CV is the very first thing an interviewer will refer to get to know you. I’ve been quite successful with my resume. How did I craft my resume to the likings of many hiring managers?

This is not a perfect guideline for you to start writing your CV/Resume. However, I wish this will help you who are clueless about how to write your resume. These tips will not guarantee a 100% hit for you to get shortlisted, but I've been using these rules for a few years and I was shortlisted for almost 70%-80% of the time.

I constructed my resume intending to make it easy for the hiring managers to find information on my qualities. After all, an interview session is a marketing session, where you should sell your service to future employers.

 Pay attention to your :

1. Information

2. Structure

3. Cleanliness

1. Information

Your information should contain concise but complete with relevant information. These are the information I include in my CV;

1.1 Personal details and contacts;

I stated my name clearly on top of my resume on the first page, with my current employment title. Why? I would like the hiring managers to know, who am I, and what is the general background of my employment and profession. If my title does not meet the requirement, or the employment is not relevant they can just skip me, or better if my current job title fits the bill, they will be more interested to read the rest of it.

Contact details are given on top, up close to my name no fuss to find where is my contact details. So, they can always give me a ring or drop me an email shall they be interested to know more about me.

 I won’t suggest you place your contact details in a small box within your resume.

 1.2 Experience;

This should be the lengthiest part of your resume. Why? This is the biggest picture of you the hiring managers have while trying to get to know you over a few pieces of papers you called resume.

 Experience is the most relevant quality the hiring manager would look into. And within this topic, you should provide a list of employment history, responsibilities, and projects managed.

 1.2.1 Employment History

Start with the most recent to the oldest. This is the basic rule, don’t mess this one up. The employment histories should contain the following information;

 1.2.2 Responsibilities

Spend some time to list down your responsibilities or assumed responsibilities. When it is listed, write a health paragraph or two describing each of your responsibilities.

 Why? Your listed responsibilities might not be relevant to the hiring managers. But when they are going through the details, they might come across some good qualities you are practicing that maybe the key abilities that they are looking for.

 For example;

 i) Responsibilities

Xxxxxxxxxx

A) Managing Requests

Managing requests from end customers and find the best-fit solutions for the end-users. Consolidate the cost, time, and quality factor in a comparison matrix before getting approval of the account or stakeholders. xxxx

In this case, if you state only “Managing Requests”, the statement is too general, sounds easy, might not be a value-adding experience. But with the later details, it gives the interviewer a broader picture of how you handle your responsibilities. In this case, other qualities they will notice are, you can handle internal customers and you know how to propose ideas or options.

I do include my assumed responsibilities under a smaller sub-header called “Other Responsibilities”. To some people, it is nothing, not listed in your KPI, shouldn’t be there but remember this information is valuable to the hiring managers.

 1.2.3 Projects Managed

The name of the project should be clear. And please include, your role in the projects or an overview of the project. But to me, the description shouldn’t be a very lengthy one, a sentence or two should do fine. The reason you need to specify the role or the overview of the project, is they need to know the relevance of the project/experience you have to their current vacancy.

The interviewer might be interested to know more about the projects, but from experience usually, that will be asked during the interview session.

1.3 Education Background

Certificates for experienced job hunters are more to validate your qualification to fill the vacancy. In my recent resumes, I stated the latest degree I acquired with a description of the course I took. This usually becomes relevant to certain job requirements which require us to qualify for a certain field.

 For the other education certificates I hold, I will only list it down without any description other than the certificates titles.

 I believe the result is no longer relevant once you have experience of more than 5 years. When you should be a professional by experience.

 The case is different with fresh grads, provide your results as you might not have enough experience to back your applications.

1.4 Skills

Skills can be acquired over a period of time. None of your professional skills are irrelevant. Include all of the skills you practice on your day to day tasks. And give it a good description of how you practice your skills.

 It does not have to be a 10 of 10 skill! And if you have many skills in hand, list 5 of your core strengths with a description and just a simple list of other skills.

1.5 Referrals

For experienced job hunters, include your direct superior/manager as your referral. But if you are not comfortable with the future employers contacting her/him. Include someone a level or two more senior than you that has been working with you and understands how you work or your job scope.

 For fresh graduates, you should include your Final Year Project supervisor(s) as your referrals, and if you did your internship, include the person you reported to during the internship.

 The referrals information should include the name, position, and contact details.

 2. Structure

 The structure of your resume is important too! The structure should be arranged based on your priorities. And for me I do it this sequence:

i) Personal Details and Contact Information

ii) Experience

iii) Education

iv) Skills

v) Referrals

I also highlighted all of the section titles to ease the hiring managers to navigate around my resume. Give the titles a highlight, a monotonous resume with improper structure might show the hiring managers that you can’t organize your information.

3. Cleanliness

Ensure your resume is clean and easy to read. Unless if you are a creative media job hunter, you will know how to juggle and play around with graphics and colors. Else, the information might be too messy to find information about you.

 A resume is not a magazine in which you think having this trivia section will be fun to read. Remember, your resume is not the only resume the hiring managers have to go through, if it’s messy, the hiring managers unable to find the information they require in a snap, your resume might be skipped.

 Keep your fonts clean, avoid comical fonts, or Times Roman font (’90s is long gone). A simple graphical resume will do you justice.