4 Tips and Tricks For The Perfect Resume

Arguably one of the most important documents in your career is your resume. It is the perfect summary of your career that is either just getting started or has been built over years. This document reflects your educational qualifications, job experience, skills and more. It also highlights the duration and number of jobs you have held down in the past which reflects the responsibilities and tasks you have taken on.

The bitter truth about this document is that it takes us a while to prepare and sometimes is only scanned for “6 to 7 seconds” by hiring managers according to Diksha Arora a content creator and interview coach. Hence it is important to draw the attention of these managers and ensure the time spent on your resume translates into a callback, interview and eventually landing the job. So here are four tips and tricks you could use to perfect your resume.

1. A Clear Summary
Sarita Das, co-founder of a tech-based supply chain company called 3SC Solutions, said, “your resume is your first impression, so keep it concise.”As the recruiter does not spend long looking at resumes it is important to follow the right format to express your points accurately in brief. Start with your details, followed by your about section where you describe yourself then, your education and work experience, and finally follow it with everything around your certifications, achievements, skills and so on. Be sure to include a clear and precise summary of your qualifications at the top of your resume. Lastly, mention your qualifications with highlight your accomplishments including any awards you have received.

2. Tailor Your Resume
Your resume is made to be shared in more than one place so you create a general sheet with your information but that alone does not cut it. The minute you are looking for a job or a shift in departments it is important to share your resume with alterations specific to that job. To do this you must use the job description as your guide to picking out “necessary keywords” according to Miti Shah a digital creator. Using those keywords across your resume will help you appear as the best fit for the role. If you are a fresher with no work experience, you can highlight your academic projects, certifications, awards, achievements, skills, interests, volunteering work, positions of responsibility and any other extracurricular activity that match the job description to make your resume more appealing.

3. Ideal Format
Candidates should keep their resumes clean, simple and readable. The most acceptable professional fonts are Times New Roman, Arial and Calibri. The font size should be between 11-12pt for normal text and 14-16pt for section titles and headers. An ideal length of a resume in case of entry-level candidates is 1 page. However, in the case of experienced professionals, the length of the resume can not exceed 2 pages. As an applicant, you should also avoid using big paragraphs, instead use bullet points wherever possible to make the resume more readable. Shah added, “A very underrated tip is to make sure that you include your LinkedIn URL on your resume right near your contact details.”

4. Highlight Correctly
The job of the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is to reject 75% of the resumes and pass only 25% to the recruiters. Even a well-qualified candidate might fail to get an interview call if the resume does not satisfy the ATS. Simply mentioning your achievements is not enough.
Arora suggests adding numbers wherever possible to give a clear picture of what you have achieved. “If you are from a sales background, instead of saying, you managed customer calls. Say you managed over 50 customer calls per day with more than a 40% conversion rate. This will ensure that your resume stands out from the crowd.” Lastly, after your entire resume is ready you can use AI websites like Jobscan to test whether your resume is ATS-friendly or not.