How Resume Should Look Like? Resume Do's and Don'ts

What is a Resume?

The word resume is derived from French, which is called “summary”. It’s a summarised document highlighting one’s professional experiences, achievements, education, skills, and others for a prospective employer. 

Why is it important?

A resume is the first resource or interaction point between the company and the candidate to know about one person. It should be a pro version of yourself which is needed for the respective field of carrier or company you are looking for.

In this modern era of the competing world, there will be thousands or millions more like you applying to your ‘dream’ space. So it is important to make your resume unique and attractive by holding all professional values to get attention among many similar out there. There are studies that support the theory that resume cues will lead to predicting the personality of the candidate and thereby deciding on hiring terms. 

Let’s try to take care of a few steps while creating a professional resume;

Resume format

Choosing the right resume format is our first and important step. Proper professional format will only catch eyes. There are different types of resume formats.

• Reverse chronological format

• Combination format

• Functional format

The combination format is more preferable to the aspirants having more working experiences and is not advised for entry-level job hunters. 

The functional format is based on skills, and because of that, it is more applicable to the entry-level aspirants. 

Most of the employers will tend to choose the reverse-chronological format since it is valued as the standard format. Even though it is common and not much creative space in format, it is the easiest to read and the most accepted one. It is presenting the recent work, achievement, education, or skills at the top and then continues to list others in reverse chronological order from there.

Contact information and personal details

It is important to decide what information should be given and what should be held back.

Contact information is a necessary one.

• Name: First name, second name

• Phone: Personal contact number preferable over home contact

• Email: Make sure it’s your professional email id, not the one made in school.

• LinkedIn and social media: Maintain your profile and be sure it is exposable professionally

• Other websites: it can be included if you have any that can enhance your probability for a particular job.

Heading Statement – Resume Objective or Resume Summary

It says the first impression is the best impression. The studies show it takes only 7 seconds for an HR manager to scan the resume. Here plays the role of heading statement, it is the point in which the manager decides whether to read further or not. 

Resume Summary Statement

When the candidate is having enough work experience in the given professional position to highlight, then a good resume summary can be worked out..

Resume Objective Statement

It is useful when the candidate is an entry-level job seeker, that is no work experience at all or not at least in the area related to the job applied. There you can highlight the transferable skills from other areas, that can make it clear that even if you don’t have experience in the exact same area but have experience relevantly related to it.

Resume Do’s and Don’ts

Do’s 

• Always prefer numbers over words. (Eg. years of experience)

• Emphasis the quality and achievements related to the job applied

• Can mention the name of the company in which you have applied. (Seeking to advance your career by growing with the DesignedEra team.)

Don’ts

• Avoid using first-person (eg: I have the experience, I am an expert, I can etc instead use, professionally equipped with, creative graphic designer for 4 years in ABCD frim, managed sales team etc)

• Don’t lie about the experiences and skills, that will lose credibility.

List your work experiences & key achievements

It is time to prove the above-described summaries and objectives. This should also be placed in a disciplined manner, bombarding information a cumulative way won’t get any result.

How to format resume work experience section:

Infographics can play a role to make it both disciplined and attractive.

Following steps may help to make it systematic.

• Job title: Company, Place: Dates employed: Key Responsibilities Handled: Key Achievements( related to applied job only)

.

List your education

• Place your highest obtained degree at the top

• And then write other degrees in reverse chronological order.

• Can include time period in which you did each degree

• If completed university degrees, avoid the school info

• Try not to put a GPA, unless it is asked to do so.

• Key accomplishments on each degree can be mentioned.

Put relevant Skills 

Be cautious to include the relevant skills that fit for the required job only. Unnecessary skills may result as a mess in the resume.

There are two types of skills:

Hard skill: are specific abilities and know-how to do, structural skills

Soft skill: self-developed, learned skills.

The combined skill set of both turns out a good skill section.

Additional important  resume section

All the above sections will be there in every resume. Make your resume unique by adding your additional important info.

Can include anything about you:

• Hobbies and interests: Volunteer works: Certifications and Awards: Internship experiences: Languages: Projects and Publications

Compliment Your Resume With Cover Letter

Cover letters will help to elaborate more over a brief summary of your resume mostly in normal sentences. A powerful cover letter that matches the resume will attract jobs.

Proofread, save and email it in the right way.

• Proofread and double check the whole.

• Save it in pdf format with file name including your name and post for which you are applying.

• Email it from your professional mail id, with proper subject and description.

Let’s look in to some samples of Professional Resume Templates :