Resume — Make or break your chance now!
A resume is a formal document that provides an overview of your professional qualifications, including your relevant work experience, skills, education, and notable accomplishments.
The resume acts as a bridge between you and the prospective recruiter. A well-formatted and beautifully designed resume changes how employers perceive you, dramatically increasing your employment opportunities.
Why do you need a resume?
In today’s competitive market of professional internships and jobs, a resume is usually a base requirement for moving forward in the interview process. A good one immediately displays to employers why the candidate is a good fit. Here are some reasons why you need a resume to get your next job. An effective resume:
- Outlines your relevant skills and experience
- Displays the benefits you offer employers
- Grabs the attention of employers
- It matches you to the position
- Can lead to an interview
Sections of the resume
Contact Information: It is essential to add your contact details to your resume. Some applicants forget this simple yet very crucial piece of information. Never forget to add your roll number, date of birth, address, telephone or mobile number, and email address.
Educational qualifications: The essential information to include in the education section is the schools and the colleges you attended. Include your grade point average (GPA) if you’re currently a student or are 1–2 years out of your under graduation.
Academic achievements: The section on your resume where you list relevant honors, achievements, or awards you earned. It includes scholarships, competitions, education-related awards, or certificates.
Technical skills: Mention any relevant skills in software(programming languages) and hardware systems, and other miscellaneous software.
Mention the courses that you have done online in any of the fields.
Research and Projects: Include the projects that you have done under the guidance of a professor and mention your upcoming projects that you are going to do. Personal projects can also be mentioned.
Positions of Responsibility: Include your title, the clubs in college you are part of, years worked, and add the list of your key responsibilities and notable successes. Be sure also to include as many relevant positions as possible.
Extracurricular Activities and Co-Curricular Activities: Includes all the sports activities and cultural activities you participated in at your school and college level. Mention your miscellaneous works apart from your academics, like volunteering in NGOs, international organizations, etc.
Areas of interest: Mention all your interests, and make sure that you include the specific interests required for the company.
Tips to make your resume attractive
It is important to remember that a resume can make or break your image in front of an employer, and it can make or break your chance in the internship process, especially when applying for startups.
Use industry keywords
Many companies now scan your resume based on keywords, and hence tweaking your resume to add such keywords has become necessary in recent times.
Use hyperlinks
You can use hyperlinks to present your LinkedIn profile, previous achievements, blogs, and projects, giving you an edge over others.
Keep it short and sweet.
Use bullet points instead of lengthy paragraphs. Add details that are relevant to the job role you apply for. If it is hard to fit it within 2 pages, you can reduce your font size but not less than 12.
What not to include in your resume?
We have so far discussed what all to include and how to format them. It might be tempting to add all your skills, high school achievements, and more to your resume, but that is counterproductive.
- Adding details irrelevant to the job role can sometimes irritate recruiters. They don’t have time to read your resume line by line.
- Never mention additional details such as age, marital status, hobbies unless and until asked.
- Removing the achievements that don’t fit can also help. The image you wish to create in front of the recruiter and your resume must go hand in hand.
Tailoring your resume based on the job role you are applying for will certainly help.
A resume plays a vital role in any interview process; hence, spending time making, tweaking, and tailoring it according to what employers are looking for becomes essential. A good resume always gives you an edge over other applicants.
So, make sure you put your best foot forward by creating a stunning resume.
This article is written by deekshitha rathod and Sruthi P
