In this article you will learn how to make a resume. Writing a resume that will make you stand out from the crowd and convince potential employers that you are someone they should interview at all costs is no easy task.
Hundreds of applications may be received for one job advertisement and the employer will in all likelihood spend little more than a few hours sifting through the mountain of resumes they receive. This means that your resume may well have less than a minute in which to grab the reader's attention and convince them to put you on the short list.
So how can you make your resume one of the chosen few? It goes without saying that first impressions are critically important. Your resume should be presented in bullet point form with a clean, uncluttered layout and plenty of white space, to make it easy on the eye. It should normally be no more than two pages in length - if you haven't been able to summarize your skills and experience effectively in that amount of space, it's probably too wordy and will fail to make the desired impact on the reader.
Your resume must be concisely worded and achievement oriented, with the most important information, such as key skills and most recent/most senior level experience, near the beginning, where it will draw the employer in and persuade them to read on. The reader must be able to find easily the information they require in order to assess the relevance of your application. If the data they need is not immediately obvious, they will in all likelihood simply move on to the next resume.
The most effective way of laying out your resume is to summarize, in a profile section at the top, your key skills, talents and experience, followed by a further summary highlighting your major career achievements. After that, outline your employment history in reverse chronological order (most recent first). You can then summarize your educational background and any relevant training programs completed, before providing details of other relevant skills, such as IT skills or foreign language ability, together with a few personal details.
Below are our tips on how to make a resume that will get you noticed, including what to include in each of the key sections of your resume, to give you the best chance of securing that all-important interview.
Profile
The purpose of the "profile" section on your resume is to capture a potential employer's interest, such that they feel compelled to read on and consider your application seriously. Your profile should be a carefully worded summary, two or three sentences in length, of your key areas of experience (including the number of years' relevant experience), your principal skills and abilities and perhaps an indication of your career aspirations.
Your profile should be, in effect, a mini cover letter, without specific reference to a particular application. It should be written with your desired role firmly in mind, to ensure that the language you use reflects the type of profile sought by your target employers.
Major achievements
It is helpful to follow the profile with a section dedicated to your major achievements. This serves to lift them out of the main body of your career history for maximum impact and encourages the employer to read on with interest. Ideally, include around three to six achievements in this section, unless your level of experience is particularly high and you feel there are further important successes to include. Clearly indicate which particular role/company each achievement belongs to.
List achievements for which you can claim genuine personal ownership and, wherever possible, quantify them in financial terms, such as "exceeded personal sales target by 30%" or "reduced overheads by £100,000, against a target of £75,000". Other achievements may revolve around recruiting and motivating successful teams, opening up new marketplaces for your company, or researching and developing new product areas, for example. As above, select the particular achievements you highlight here in line with the requirements of the type of role you wish to secure.