Hisham Sarwar
It’s a recruiter’s responsibility to look at a job seeker’s resume and decide whether he/she fits in best into their organization or not. He is the kind of job-matching professional and you have to prove him first that you are eligible enough for the post.
In order to get a complete understanding of how a professional resume should look like, following is the sample resume that you can modify according to the field or industry you specialize in.
There are so many reasons for creating your resume similar to this sample resume. Following are few of the significant details which you can keep in mind while writing your resume.
URL of the jobseeker’s Profile:
When it comes to creating an online professional profile, the URL of the job seeker is the main part for which recruiter’s look for. It allows them to trust your profile and seriously consider you for the job if you fill in the job requirements.
Consistent Branding:
Having a common name can make you similar to other candidates but you can make it look different from others. For example decide your name as Muddassir Hassan or Mohammad Muddassir or Hassan. Muddassir, you can use it consistently on all your networking platforms.
Phone number and Address:
Even if you more than one cell phone numbers or email addresses, there is no need to give all the details to the hirers. Just give them one phone number and email address that you most frequently use.
No addition of objective statement:
There is no need to waste recruiter’s time by writing statements that “I am a professional looking for a job opportunity”. Sending of resume means you are interested in the job opportunity so it is better not to waste space and time with such statements.
Provide an executive summary:
You can easily replace irrelevant statements with relevant summary which rightly explains your specialization, your interests, and how you can be a valuable employee in just four or five sentences.
Use of reverse chronological order:
Recruiters are always interested in your recent job experiences. List your work experience information from newest too oldest e.g. begin with your most recent job and then write down the previous experiences.
Helpful keywords:
Most of the organizations go through a screening process in order to choose the perfect candidates. So it is best to include keywords that are related to the field you are applying for. Incorporating some of the common terminologies and key phrases will help you pass the initial screening process and your resume will land onto the recruiter’s desk.
Provision of company descriptions:
It is helpful for the recruiters if you add a little bit of the company’s description onto your resume. You can find information in the company’s “About us” section and rewriting two or three lines. Be careful and include that right underneath the company’s name.
Do not use dense blocks of texts:
With thousands of resume at hand, recruiters are in a hurry to scan through some of the easily understandable resumes. Therefore do not include dense blocks of text which makes the resume inappropriate in the recruiter’s eyes.
List achievements in bullet points:
In your achievement section, give a little explanation about your contribution to each project you worked for the previous companies under the each job or experience. It is better to write in bulleted points.
Quantifying Achievements:
In three or five bulleted points, quantify the main achievements for your every job experience. This section can contain the money you bought in for your employer, deals closed, and on time and under budget delivered projects.
Follow the “result by action” rule:
For a resume, it is always appropriate to follow a result by action sentence structure. It means that first write the amount of money and then the source of earning. For example you can write as “Generated $US 352,000 in yearly savings by applying a new technique for the business vendor relationship”.
Formatting:
Recruiters do not have enough time to thoroughly read every resume; they just scan in the shortest possible time. So simple formatting of the text can make it easy to understand which recognizes the recruiter’s required goals.
Stick to the basics:
Resume is for a professional purpose so try to stick to the basic rules of creating a resume. Text options such as Arial, Calibri and Times new Roman are the best for this purpose. Keep the text in basic black color.
Do not use Pronouns:
While creating a resume, always write it in first person. Do not use Pronouns as it gives a very weird impression. Present your resume in the simplest possible manner.
No Images:
Do not confuse the applicant-tracking software by including embedded table, pictures or any kind of other images. Avoid such practices at all cost or you will lose even the initial chances of winning the job post.
Header and Footer:
You may feel to display your information in the header as it looks neat but the companies use an applicant tracking system for the very initial resume scanning. Therefore do not use Header or Footer to display any kind of information. This tracker can muddle up the information and can end up your resume in trash.
Include relevant academic information:
Always focus on your work experience at the start of your resume and shift the education information to the bottom. You will not have zero experience unless you are a recent college graduate so always highlight your practices and skills. Also you should never include anything about your high school years.
Do not include meaningless sentences:
People who are hiring you are very well aware of the fact that you will provide all kinds of references when they will ask you to give. So there is no need to waste yours and recruiter’s time on meaningless lines such as “following people speak very highly of my art work”.
