You know you need an excellent resume to have any chance of standing out from the crowd. How to write an excellent resume? The following five items are critical skills for building a resume. Nail them and you can’t go wrong.
- Make it perfectly readable for a human being.
Make sure that your resume is grammatically correct, contains proper spelling, and is concisely written.
Do not put all your trust grammarly or spellcheck! If you’re unsure of a grammatical or style issue, look it up. Read the resume aloud when you’ve completed each draft: you’ll be surprised what you catch.
Writing aside, your resume’s layout should make your resume easy to read. Word-processing programs provide templates created by professional graphic designers. Use one.
- Make it perfectly readable for a machine.
Your resume will almost certainly get e-read by a machine before any human being sees it. So, take into consideration the quirks of parsing programs:
- Use bullets, not numbered lists. Parsers cannot handle numbered lists.
- Find and include keywords that are specific to your industry and your job role.
- Use and properly label sections, such as Experience and Education.
- Quantify your achievements.
Attach numbers to your accomplishments. How many people reported to you? How large was the budget you were responsible for? How much did sales increase because of your efforts? If you can’t assign a numerical value, you can still communicate relative size: how large a region did your sales team cover? Maybe it can be described as midsize, large or immense?
- Write a succinct summary statement.
Describe yourself as professional in a couple of crystal-clear, concise sentences. Populate the short paragraph with critical keywords.
- Paint a picture of yourself as a well-rounded person.
Human beings are not entirely quantifiable. Present your true breadth by listing not only your technical skills, but also different job roles and positions. Give examples of specific projects. List outside interests, volunteer work, and provide certifications too.
Cleversow offers a free resume-building system that makes hitting these five points easy. The platform provides a great-looking, machine-readable Smart Profile that actually replaces your resume. And your profile includes an introductory video, so that the real you shines through – well beyond what even the best summary statement can achieve.