How to write a Resume

There are three standard resume formats; Chronological, functional, and hybrid. For most of the job seekers, a hybrid resume is the best option to put equal emphasis on skills and work experience. In some cases, chronological or functional resume might work better.

Chronological

Pros

Highlights your career advancements.

Most usually used way and is most common to recruiters.

Emphasizes the most relevant job experience.

Best for job seekers with highly relevant work.

Cons

shows gaps in employment if any.

 it does not emphasize skills and abilities.

Functional

Pros
Focuses on your skills and abilities.

Minimizes your work experience.

Works well for job seekers with no relevant work experience.

Cons
 This way of formation is usually not preferred by the recruiters.

Leaves out the work experiences, which is frequently a requirement,

Hybrid

Pros
Hybrid puts equal focus on skills and experience.

Offers a lot of space for resume keywords.

It combines best elements of the sequential  functional formats.

Works well for most of the job seekers.

Cons
 It cannot hide resume gaps.

Your name and contact information

Name

Phone number
Location with city, state and zip code
Email address
LinkedIn profile URL

This information can make it as easy as possible for recruiters to contact you

You can also try the following tips for your resume.

 Include your personal number, not the work number you are provided with or are allotted by to use for official purposes.

 Recruiters often look for local candidates first. If you are local you can add your state, city, and zip code.

 Use a professional sounding email address. Get a Gmail account if you do not have one with a decent sounding email address.

 Create and maintain a strong LinkedIn profile and mention the URL on your resume.

Headline

A resume headline is a precise description of who you are as a candidate in one line. A thought out and well written headline can grab a recruiter’s attention and encourage them to take a more detailed look at your qualifications.

Your headline is a strong addition to your resume, often the first thing read by any recruiter. Use that opportunity to leave a strong impression.

Try to include keywords from the job posting, ideally the job title. Try to keep it short & use title case and adjust your font so your headline stands out easily.

An example would be:
ELIZABETH WALLACE
Seattle, Washington 98101| (555)555-1234|ElizabethWallace@gmail.com|LinkedIn.com/in/elizabethwall
Human Resources Manager with 5 Years’ Experience Leading HR Teams
Resume summary statement

A resume summary statement is a short paragraph or section of points at the beginning of a
resume that highlights your professional skills and experience.

your summary should expand on your headline and shows the recruiters and hiring managers why you are a good fit for the job.

Not all job seekers will benefit from using summary statement. If you do not have much job experience or are switching careers, you could use that space to talk about your work history section, skills section or a strong objective statement instead.

Look for patterns in your work history and include a short and precise overview.

Include your most important and relevant skills.

Mention your most impressive achievements.

Use keywords from the job description.

Work experience

Work experience is a critical part of the resume because most employers look at this section to determine if your job history and prior accomplishments make you a promising candidate.

This is not only important place to describe your job responsibilities but also your competence in those job positions. You can use this opportunity to show recruiters how you have added a unique value to the prior companies.

The first thing any recruiter wants to be looking at are the job titles you have held as well as the calibre of the companies you have worked with. Make sure they find this information easily by highlighting them in a familiar format.

Make the list in reverse-chronological order. Every job description should have its own
subheading followed by the following information:
Company

Job location

Job title

Start and end dates.

Try to stick with traditional titles such as Work Experience or Professional Experience.
include measurable results if possible.

Try to add as many relevant skills and keywords from the job description as possible. Tailer the information provided in this section to the job you are applying for specifically.

Relevant skills and keywords

Many companies now a days use a sorting system that tracks and finds specific keywords from the stack of resumes. The more role specific keywords your resume contains, the better optimized your resume will be.

Majority of the Fortune 500 companies use Applicant Tracking System to sort, filter and search applicants. Such ATS like Taleo can rank your resume’s content against the job description, allowing recruiters to focus only on the best applicants.

You should also incorporate important skills throughout entire resume, beginning with the headline which should include the most important keyword: the job title.

How to find the relevant keywords?

The first place is the job description where you will find the soft and hard skills mentioned. Consider anything that is required or mentioned several times important.

You can also use several keyword search engines which will run your resume against the job description to let you know what are the missing keywords that you need to incorporate.

Education, Certification and any other relevant information

Depending on the job, there are other sections that are worth adding as well such as
Education, Awards and accolades, volunteer experience and certifications. Anything you
include in your resume should be relevant to the job you are applying for.

Education

This section is important specially in jobs that require a degree. If you are a few years into you career, then you can push your education section to be minimized at the bottom of resume.

Unless you are applying for careers that put an extra emphasis on education like academia, law or medicine, most of the job seekers can get away with providing the minimal information on their resume, such as:

Institution’s name

Degree

School location

Years attended.

For recent graduate job seekers, the education section will be above their work experience
and will include more detail. They can also include their most relevant coursework, societies, organizations, and extracurriculars that strengthen their profile.

You can include Awards, accolades, and certifications in the work experience and skills sections of the resume. As usual, try to keep it as relevant to the job position in question as possible.

Tailor your resume and optimize for ATS

When you are customizing your resume for a specific job, a big part of that work is to include all the important and relevant keywords. This communicates to the recruiter that you are not in the unknown about the job position and have done your research.

A customized resume will not only catch the eyes of recruiters, it will also stand the test of ATS, because of those keywords.

Grammar and formatting

Resume writing is a crafty work. you have to factor in a lot of variations like use of
pronouns, fonts, formats and so on. Let’s take a closer look at the important ones.

Resume Fonts

Professional fonts are mandatory on resumes for their ease of reading, Ats compatibility, and common availability. You should not use custom fonts unless you are a designer and avoid smaller fonts than size 10.

Tense and Pronouns

Use the appropriate noun for previous or current job positions. Traditional resume writing leaves out personal pronouns.

Resume Action Words

Action words help your resume writing be more of attention-grabbing while making your
resume more readable for recruiters and hiring managers.

Consider beginning each bullet point on your resume with an action verb and replacing generic verbs like “managed” or “led” with more engaging words like “mentored” or “accelerated”.