How to Check if a Resume Is Ready For Submission?
You’ve done everything there is. You’ve updated and made your resume top-notch by adding power words, by adopting the right format and structure, by checking the length and even designing it well. You’re now fully prepared to send your resume across to the hiring manager for your dream job’s application. But, you need to be sure of what you’re sending across and need to scan it once at your end. Here is a checklist you can keep with yourself to tick off the important things.
Spellings
This is the most basic check and also one of the most important things to be ticked off first. You need to go through the document and rectify all spell errors if any. Don’t rely on Microsoft Word to underline or highlight your errors. If you have a doubt with professional terms, run an online search and be doubly sure. Don’t take misspelt words casually, it might ruin your impression.
Tense
More often it so happens that, when we update our resumes with our current
experience, we forget to change the tense of the sentences. The current experience needs to have action words in the present tense like ‘designing’, ‘creating’, etc. Now at the same time, the previous experience needs to be converted to the past tense which often gets missed out and the past experience also reads as ‘designing’, ‘executing’. This may irk the person reading it.
Convert to PDF
Please convert all your resume documents into PDFs. Why? Simply because it presents itself more neatly and keeps your format intact. You don’t want a situation where you send across a word document (on which you’ve worked on for hours together and successfully arrived at a two-page resume) and due to the varying screen resolutions, the two pages may turn into three or the data may get split from the middle. PDFs ensure that the format of the document remains intact.
Clarity
This point is essential in terms of what you’re trying to convey. One glance at your completed resume should clearly state what message you’re wanting to send across to the recruiter in terms of your experience. Your relevant skills need to shine through your resume. Make sure you have clarity.
Font consistency
Stick to the basic fonts. Don’t try to stand out by using different fancy fonts to highlight important things. You need to check that overall usage of types of fonts should be only two, maximum.
