CONTENT OF A RESUME

• ApplicationsFor all the qualities and strengths you list include an incident or two, either work related or real life, that shows your credibility. Explain the benefits of your skills. Answer the question: How do/ did these qualities help you?
• KeywordsBased on the role you are interested in, include the keywords as part of the content. Use skills, technologies, OS, programming languages etc. These help recruiters shortlist resumes in huge databases. You can refer to job descriptions to pick the most important ones.
• AchievementsWhen the prior experience makes its way to the resume, list your achievements instead of the responsibilities you handled in the role. I increased sales by 10% is better than I was responsible for sales improvement. If you have no professional work experience, mention any achievements as part of your education and related projects.
• Facts and figuresWhich one do you like better? “I scored a lot of marks in college” or “I graduated with 95%”? Exactly! Use numbers, facts and figures where applicable. Be specific instead of being generic and providing vague detail.
• Age, hobbies and other personal infoAge might help you get a good match on a dating site. On a resume, it’s not a necessary detail. No age. No Date of Birth. Be ready to provide information if requested; but try not to mention it to start with. Same with hobbies; unless it’s going to be a huge benefit to the organization you’re aspiring to work with, please do away with hobbies on resume. Employers don’t care if you “like watching TV” and “listen to music”. Everybody does!
• Irrelevant infoA few other pieces of information such as political affiliation, religion, your stance on telangana issue and sexual preference is irrelevant. In fact it might even hurt your chances of getting through the initial shortlisting. Just skip it.
• Mr and MsIf you have a gender neutral name, use Ms or Mr as title.
• Don’t lieOne – it’s wrong. Two –most HR departments do background checks these days, and if some detail in your resume turns out to be fake, ‘zero tolerance’ policies regarding ethics will get you a pink slip. The damage is two-fold: you lose your job and all the effort you invested in getting in is wasted.
• ExperienceIf you have too many past work experiences, you need not list them all. The last 3 is good. You can even omit any job experiences that are not relevant to the role you’re tailoring this resume for. If any of those work experiences include working directly with CEO or reporting in to other senior members of the organization, it’s a good idea to mention that.
• Professional goalsThere is no need for a separate section that highlights what you want to be in the next 5, 10 or 20 years. Any professional goals you have should be evident as overall elicitations in your resume.
• Avoid slang and jargonTo get to the interview with a technical expert, you need to clear the initial screening and selection panel. More often than not, people who pick up your resume and screen it for the role are not subject matter experts. When you use too much slang or jargon, you sound Greek to them; your resume stops there.