How to Write Your Job-Winning Resume

Resumes are akin to advertisements; The aim of advertisements is to sell a particular product, or a range of products.

Similarly, your resume should also be selling a product, which, in your case, is yourself.

Like all advertisements, the needs of the clients are foremost in consideration. Similarly, before penning down the resume, you should first ask: What is the employer looking for? Is there any specific set, or sets of skills that you may possess, that may fit the requisites for the job? What are the required characters and traits that you may have that the employer may wish to harness from you?

The crux to winning an interview is this: Always put the employer's needs above yours. This will help improve your chances of winning a job.

Once you have earmarked these requirements, chances are, you should have no problems in giving the right information to the employer.

Sectioning Your Resume

A good resume contains two major sections.

The first section should include your abilities, achievements and your qualities, to convince the prospective employer that you are indeed the right man or woman for the job.

The second section will be a showcase to beef up your claims: Your previous employment records and educational qualifications should be chronicled so as to build a case for the basis of your claims.

Presentation

While there are no standard guidelines to write resumes, certain tips with regards to presentation skills will enhance your resume, enabling you to score points with the prospective employer.

Presentation, in terms of aesthetic and neatness, will score points with employers. Messy, incoherent resumes will be skipped and trashed into the bin (whether it is the physical bin or the computer version), hence presentation is one of the key skills the job seeker must practice to perfection.

A few highlighted sections will include:

1. Experience

List down your previous employment history in reverse chronological order (The latest job first, earliest job last).

This list should include your most recent employment history, and should not include manual or odd jobs which you have performed prior to your most advanced education, as these entries may be irrelevant, and may be quite tedious and boring to read.

List down, and highlight in bold, your job titles, particularly so for the more impressive ones, since these titles will enable you to stand out amongst the whole list of suitors on the waiting list.

If you happen to perform a stint in the military service, remember to pen it down, as employers tend to regard military personnel as men of honesty, integrity and professionalism.

2. Education

List down your education history in reverse chronological order. If possible, do not list down your stints in college and your educational levels further down the level, as this may not be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Unless you have some noteworthy achievements in college, such as distinctions for certain particular subjects, or served an almost impeccable stint with a sports or school club, chances are, you might want to give it a miss.

If your educational level is low, however, you may have little choice but to include your stints at lower levels. If that is the case, you may have to include the dates of when you attend your respective educational institutions, and chances are, you may wish to increase your credentials by mentioning additional external courses which you have completed to show that you are serious about upgrading your personal skills.

Awards/Testimonials

These are additional credentials which you must include in your resume, if any. Be sure to attach these testimonials to the resume as evidence to your claims.

Personal Interests/Hobbies

As trifling as it may sound, your hobbies and interests may intrigue the employer who may be looking for the special recruit for the job.

If you think you have a hobby that will enhance your credentials, e.g running marathons and applying to be a gym instructor, it would make sense that you want your hobby to be noted down in your resume.

However, hobbies such as sleeping, watching TV and other undesirables should have no place in your resume, as these are minus points that will peg you back down the ladder in the waiting list.

Publications:

If you have any noteworthy publications during your stint in the university, or have written for magazines and other written material, you may include references to these materials to further impress your prospective employers.

Additional Tips

Besides proper segmentation, additional attention must be paid towards writing the all-important resume.

Use spell checks to check for vocabulary and grammar errors; never use SMS or other forms of colloquial English in your resumes, as these forms of English will not go down well with recruiters.

Fonts that are either too cursive or weird looking should not be used. As a guideline, stick to Times New Roman, or other similar fonts.

While it is important to emphasize your achievements in your resume, care must be taken to avoid snow-balling the exaggeration into something falsifiable. A person who works as a lawyer's assistant, for example, would be deemed as dishonest if he merely states his position as a lawyer in the law firm.

Understanding the mechanisms behind job hunting is the essence behind writing a great resume. Take your time, review what you have written, and re-draft them as and when necessary before submitting.