How critically delicate is your resume?

It is the only document which gives you an opportunity to make an impactful first impression. It is a record of all your accomplishments – Education, Internships, Work Experiences, Skills and other details– basically a snapshot of who you are.

You need to make the most of this opportunity and portray the attainments in an impressive manner as there are no second chances.

A crisp, error-free and coherently presented resume allows you to make an immediate positive impression. A well-constructed resume should document your skills and convince the selection team about your remarkable application.

Top tips for building a strong resume:

1. Content should be in a chronologically order – Make sure your resume has all your content lined in an easy and quick reader friendly manner and ensure that achievements are well highlighted. There isn’t much time invested by the selection team to read it thoroughly and do analysis, they like to read the highlighted area to gain an initial image.

2. Use action and power words – When talking about your skills, activities and recognitions use action words like - Adapted, Collaborated, Energized, Gathered, Harmonized, Ignited, Joined, Melded and many more. The list can go on and they create a massive effect from the word go, by zapping away the common boring phrases.

3. Do not just add a list of descriptors, instead identify accomplishments – When talking about Internships and Work Experience it is important that you use the space on the CV to highlight your endeavours rather explaining in details the job profile. Like talk about projects undertaken, accolades and appreciations received, this highlights your skills in an expanded manner.

4. Don’t make things up or heighten successes - It is essential to be authentic. A small lie on a resume document will not bode well in the future. More importantly, you must have your own information upright so that you don’t freeze during an interview.

5. Personal information is not needed on your resume – No one is really interested in knowing your personal details like – religion, parents name, marital status etc therefore don’t waste time and space adding them. Instead use the resume space in a very decisive manner.

6. Be precise and concise – Choose your words smartly, they should express more than their literal self, that is with a few words explain more. Be crisp. An ideal resume is exactly 1 page long without spill overs from formatting, but at times it can be 2 pages but make sure that the content being put is important and necessary. Don’t repeat data.

7. Proof Reading – You may be remarkably talent in creating your resume and feel that just one edit is enough to finalise it. But that is not suggested, for a document as critical as resume, you should revisit your draft everyday to find minute hidden mistakes. Ensure that you also get another pair of eyes to review your drafts before you finalise it.

8. Presentation should be accurate – After working on doing everything like adding right content, editing, using action words and other stuff the most obvious point when writing a resume, this is usually ignored or not given importance is the formatting. Make sure you use a single colour and style of font. If each header is made bold, follow this pattern throughout the document. Using too many fonts leads to more of an eye sore than beautification of text.

Underinvesting in the resume writing process is a huge mistake, which many applicants make far too often.

Be smart when in prioritising your application elements.

Invest your efforts and time in drafting a strong resume and get a head start!