How to Structure Your Resume
What
Is a Resume?
First things first: let's define a resume. A resume is a summary of your work history, skills, and
education. In this respect, a resume is
different than curriculum vitae — more commonly called a CV. A CV is a complete look at your
career, covering every aspect of your education, work and experience, but a
resume is a summary of those experiences and skills, and
typically covers work employment. And it should be just one
or two pages long.
A resume is the most requested document in any job search —
followed by the cover letter, of course. In fact, recruiters
scrutinize job candidates' resumes more closely than their cover letters. So let's move on to
how to structure it right.
How to Structure Your Resume
No two resumes will look exactly alike, but generally, resumes
should have the following sections.
Header
& Contact Info:
At the top of your resume, always
include a header containing your name. Your contact info (typically your phone
number, personal email address and sometimes links to social profiles or personal websites)
should be close by as well. After all, you don’t want there to be any confusion
over which the resume belongs to, or make it difficult for recruiters or hiring
managers to reach out to you. However, you may want to avoid putting your
contact info in the header or footer of the document itself — the headers and
footers can sometimes be overlooked by the software that scans your
resume.
Professional
Summary:
The professional summary is a brief;
one- to three-sentence describes who you are, what you do and why you’re perfect for the job. a line that describes the
type of career opportunity you’re looking for — professional summaries aren’t
about what you want. Instead, they’re focused on the value you could bring to a
potential employer.
Education:
Since many jobs require a certain level of education, it’s important to mention your
academic certificates on your resume. However, this section shouldn’t take up
too much space. In most cases, simply listing where you went to school, what
degree you had and other degree you have (Postgraduates, other …) and it’s
important to start with the most recently one.
Work
Experience:
The Work Experience section should include company names, locations, employment
dates, roles and titles you held and most importantly, bullet points
containing action verbs and data points that
detail the relevant accomplishments of each position. This part is essential
for recruiters and hiring managers, who look to absorb information about your
career experiences and connect your skills to what they’re looking for in a
potential hire.
Recruiters are often flooded with resume
submissions and have to carefully source and identify quality candidates, so
make sure your work experience stands out.
Skills:
The skills section has
become more and more important as recruiters and hiring managers increasingly
look for candidates with specialized backgrounds. It’s best to clearly list
them. If they see right away that you have the ability to get the job done,
they’re much more likely to take your resume seriously. Great tips for it, you
have to write your skills separated ( Technical skills, Computer skills and
interpersonal skill match your job title)
Design & Formatting Tips
- Use these rules of thumb to ensure
that your resume looks its best.
- Use
an easy-to-read font of no less than 11 pt.
- Add
margins of at least .7 inches.
- Make
sure there’s sufficient white space between sections.
- Don’t
go overboard with intricate design or decoration — touches of color are fine,
but avoid any clashing or visually busy details.
- If
you’re going to print out copies of your resume, invest in good paper and use a
high-quality printer.
- Don’t
save your resume as a PDF unless the application specifically says it accepts
PDF files. Some applicant tracking systems scan PDFs as if they were one big
image, which fails to capture your information.
- Keep
your resume to 1-2 pages max.
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