resume writing help

resume writing help

Resume Writing Tips

1. Introduction

In our competitive world, it is becoming harder and harder to land the job of your dreams. One thing you can do to give yourself the best possible chance is to learn how to write a killer resume. Costs for someone to write it for you can range from $20 to $200! It is so much more rewarding to write it yourself, and with the help of this guide, you can create something that a resume writer could never make without knowing you personally. This guide will show you everything you need to know to write a super resume that will make employers beg you to work for them.

If you’ve ever written a resume before, you know how overwhelming it can be. If you are writing one for the first time in a while or a recent graduate, it can be especially difficult. With so much information and advice out there, it’s hard to know what will really help. Whether you are writing your first resume or revising the one you currently have, below you will find tips that will help you plan, write, and design your resume.

2. Formatting Your Resume

For the main part, the top half of the first page and the only half of the page after that are the prime real estate on your resume. This is the key area where employers want to see “what can this person do for me?”. So, below your profile should follow a bullet-pointed summary of your Key Achievements and Qualifications. It doesn’t matter what kind of resume you’re doing, the order from here on should always be the same: Employment History, Education, Other Skills, and finally Interests. But more on that later….

Coming under is what is referred to as a RELEVANT Skills table. Note that word relevant. Don’t think that this is where you list all your skills. A good table will help categorize you in the employer’s mind and present your name in relation to your skills using adjectives. This is the way it should be. The rest of the skills that aren’t so important you can list in bullet format. Remember, an employer will only need to know you have the skill, so avoid writing paragraphs to explain their use.

Start your resume with a brief paragraph that tells the employer what you can do for them. Don’t make them guess who you are and what you’re about. This paragraph, sometimes known as a profile, is a great tool to brand yourself. It shouldn’t be a drawn-out paragraph, keep it short (3-6 lines). This is helpful as it provides a way to answer the career challenge “Tell me about yourself”. A well-written profile will enable someone to recite it back to you in their own words. This should lead to a strap line. You are now an arger with a one-liner that must be remembered!

The most difficult step is to make sure that your resume presents you as an excellent professional. You must make it very easy for an employer to see in seconds that you are right for the job. To do this, you need to have a solid understanding of who you are, what you have to offer, and what you’re aiming for. The most important selling point you have is the opening six lines of your resume, so spend time on them.

3. Crafting an Effective Summary

Using a career summary section of your resume is the best way of describing professional history. The career summary section should not explain why you are taking the new job, but more on what you can contribute to the organization. Do not explain what types of jobs you are looking for, just include the information about the types of jobs you are seeking. When crafting a summary, you should have a specific job in mind. A generalized summary is not very strong. If this is the case, it is best to leave the career summary and objective sections off the resume and use a professional skills or profile section instead. A profile section is a simplified and generalized skills and qualifications. If you really feel the need to include a career summary section on your resume, setting up a career summary section or professional objective section can be just as good as just starting off with the first company and job title. Use a career summary section to get across the specific reason why you are perfect for a certain job. At a very high level, this shows that you are qualified for the job and that you have refreshingly read the job description. Try not to add too much value with overqualification. When listing your previous employment, you should use a bullet point list of jobs. Underneath each job, you should include a brief description about the job followed by a list of accomplishments. It is best to list the job description first. Using a bullet point list of jobs will make the resume much easier to read. A paragraph form is less time-consuming but becomes difficult to read, and the reader typically skims over the long paragraph, missing the opportunity to read valuable information. Typically, educational institutions use a career services and testing office to assist in career development. If you are a current student or recent graduate, it is best advised that you go to your career services office or testing and recruiting website. Career services can provide resume feedback and often times have people who can help guide you through the daunting task of starting a career.

4. Highlighting Your Skills and Experience

Another good technique that can be used in the skills section is to add proof of your skills where possible. An example of this would be “Word processing skills, demonstrated when I wrote a 3000-word document in a day with a high level of accuracy and detail.” This shows a method of practice so you are coming across an initial skill and then demonstrating the results you can deliver.

By including descriptive words, for example, “excellent customer service skills,” it will help give the employer an idea of what you are offering and shows that you are capable of providing them with quality work. You always want to word it in a way that you are portraying factual information and not making yourself look self-centered.

The skills that you put in your resume are the key selling points to a potential employer. The best way to start writing the skills section is by looking at the job you are applying for and matching your own skills to the job requirements. This will give you a good idea of the skills that are required and how to phrase your skills in a way that will be seen as relevant to the job.

Writing about your skills is a great opportunity to add vital information to your resume. Only include a list of your technical skills if they are appropriate to the job you are applying for. You can combine your technical and personal skills in a section that goes something like “My technical and personal skills include.”

5. Finalizing Your Resume

Managing your Resume and Results [to do] Your resume will sometimes be kept and published to complete job applications. You will also need to email your resume to a person. Posting to a database or applying over a company site is step one in lots of talent recruitment processes, where your resume is going to be stored and reviewed using keywords and then possibly moved upon a screen and studied quickly in a scanning process. Take into account that the first and subsequent viewing might be by someone other than the intended audience. Is your resume easy to access? Will the reader have the capability to know your background and ambitions clearly? This can be one factor to use more than one resume. A stored resume is also a setting for you to understand how the recruiting process really works. Whether you had initially had human attention for any position or perhaps a recruiter just quickly scanned lots of people, you can soon realize that a business may be a target through spamming employers with plenty of resumes in the shot at anything. A forward-thinking tactic could have you learning search engine marketing or SEO, to ensure that you will discover ways to develop your online identity.”

“5. Finalizing Your Resume [to do] As you prepare for sending out your resume to various companies, never forget that it is a marketing piece. Basically, you are offering the customer (i.e. the prospective employer) with the help of the product (you). You are the product. So, you need to give attention to the needs of the customer (the business/employer). The very first is to consider the top 1/3 of your resume – is that a focused discussion of the objective for the sort of position you are wanting to get. If not, you might want to think about a resume profile or summary. Head to the Mock Resume Activity and study the resume tips.