Making a perfect resume – Tips & Strategy

A resume makes the very first impact about you and is the initial step for getting a desired job role. Before applying for Jobs/desired openings make sure your resume is perfect and will help you take an edge over other candidates.

Most MNC’s and big organisations have no time to check thousands of resume each day and they use an Applicant tracking system (ATS) for the same. Your resume must be ATS compliant to make your resume stand out. Ever wondered that the resumes submitted to a company 75% of them are not even seen screened through the ATS.

There are some essential points you must keep in mind while designing your resume: –

1. Proper Structure: –

Make sure you prepare your resume in a chronological order and that too precise enough.

a.  Name & Contact information: – This is the starting point of any resume and you need to highlight your name first of all. If required, you may use your image but if not required it is suggested to keep it without your image. You can provide you address and if the job opening requires local candidate you can smartly put upon your relative’s, friend’s address in the section. Your email ID, LinkedIn URL, and contact number will be enough to be mentioned.

b. Summary/objective: – As a fresher you need to tell your objective, future prospects and desired career path. You need to explain your expertise, skills and how you can be the part of desired company/ organisation. It must be straight forward, precise and catchy enough making a positive impression on the recruiter.

c. Professional & Educational history: – Here, if you are experienced you need to tell your professional history along with educational qualifications else as a fresher your educational qualifications must be mentioned preferably with a short description about each one.

d. Skills & abilities: – Skills are something that can make you stand out of the rush. If you have or can develop a skill related to your filed and are good at it you will definitely get a preference over other candidates. Beside it mention your soft and hard skills in a ratio of 1:1.

e. Other achievements, Projects, Awards: – You can mention all of them with a short description at the end of your resume. The initial resume structure will probably be helpful to get you an initial kickstart in your career. Keep it simple and straight.

2. ATS compliant: –

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) is something that is nowadays used my most of the organisations and companies to sort out best possible resume with the help of software. No matter if you are highly experienced or fresher the ATS will sort out you resume on the basis of the requirements and keywords that might be inserted for sorting the applications. Below are some points you can use to make your resume ATS compliant.

• ATS is used by most of the companies nowadays to sort out best applications.
• Almost 80% of the resumes are not even read by the ATS and mostly the top 5%-10% resumes make it to the next round.
• Your default option should be a PDF file because it is universal and can be read by (most) ATS. 
• Make it simple with proper headings.
• Label all the sections in a proper chronological order.
• Use job related keywords.
• Short forms may not be recognized by some ATS systems. We advise include the acronym as well as the word’s full spelling. Like don’t use PCR instead use Polymerized chain reaction (PCR).

Keeping these points in mind you can create a very well manner resume and get a kickstart in your career at the starting point. A resume makes first impact and if it is well formatted you have an edge over other candidates for starting a career.  

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