Thanks to Abhyank Srinet for his guest blog helping you create the best resume. See his bio below.
– Coach Wolfgang

An effective job resume can go a long way in making a good first impression.
With HR managers being inundated with hundreds if not thousands of resumes for even mid-level job posts, it is imperative that you are able to grab their attention, and make a positive mark within a limited time frame.

To make things worse, research has shown that hiring managers just spend 6 seconds scanning a resume, and make a large part of the final decision based on the same.

So, you just have 6 seconds to make a mark, no pressure!

To make sure your resume stands out you need to analyze all the varied aspects that make a Resume not just good but Great… your best resume! This ranges from having a clean format, to standardized fonts, to well optimized bullets to relevant action words.

To make your life easier, we have come up with a list of 12 points to craft the best resume for work.

Check them out below…

Have an effective and clean format

A clean format with sub sections dealing with Work experience, Education and Skills and proper bullet points can put up a good first impression. The recruiter can easily scan the important parts and understand the gist of the profile in a short time frame. Download free modern resume samples.

Don’t play around with fonts

With literally thousands of fonts available these days, one does get tempted to showcase their creativity and personality via a unique combination, but it’s always better to use standard fonts such as Calibri, Garamond, Trebuchet MS, Georgia, and Helvetica. These fonts are legible and will give a fluid look to your resume.

Mention the relevant details

Yes, we all know you are on several social media sites, and they very well may highlight a unique part of your personality.
But for your best resume for a job, keep it strictly professional. Apart from name, email, phone number and address, only the LinkedIn profile should be an addition. You have less space so use it well.

Pro Tip: Use headers and Footers to showcase contact info, so you don’t waste space unnecessarily

Optimize your content according to your reader

A common resume for all job applications will only get you so far. You need to optimize your content according to the job you are applying to. Only recent and relevant experience should be mentioned, you can use the rest of the space to highlight particular skills that the HR manager maybe looking for.

Optimize your bullet points

Remember the 6 second attention span?

Well your bullet points should be concise and to the point so that the reader can easily skim through the data and get an idea of the role you played and the impact you caused. Aim to keep your bullets 1-2 points long. Also do not add more than 4-5 bullets per job.

Quantify your bullet points

The aim of a good bullet point is to help the reader understand your job role and at the same time see how you added value to a company. For example, compare these two:

Statement 1: Responsible for making a marketing plan for a new product and successfully launching it in the market.

Statement 2: Developed strategic marketing plan to introduce product into international and domestic markets, launch exceeded forecasts by 17%.

You can see the difference between them and the impact caused. The work done is much clearer in the second statement. Aim to build points similarly into your best resume.

Pro Tip: Ask yourself “So What” until you come up with the perfect sentence structure, that showcases what you have done.

Use action words

In the best resumes, action words play an important role at the start of every bullet point, they are more descriptive in nature and tend to more accurately describe the nature of your work. Think of skimming through a resume and coming across word such as “Was, Did, and Made”, as opposed to “Managed, Spearheaded and Created” and you will see the difference.

Additionally, a lot of companies use automated scanning software which specifically looks for action words. Therefore, make sure you include relevant ones in your resume.

Keep the resume jargon free

Your resume will be going through the hands of several people from HR officials, to Tech people to your future managers. Hence you should aim to keep your language jargon free. In case of tech oriented jobs, this can be a challenge, but giving relevant context and not using less known abbreviations can go a long way to make your resume more understandable.

Highlight educational achievements

Even if you graduated from college years ago, mentioning your degree adds weight to your profile, especially if you are from a well-known college. Additionally, if it’s a specialized job the degree helps. Lastly, highlighting awards received showcases drive and an achievement driven profile, which is appreciated by recruiters.

Mention only relevant skills in your best resume

The Phrase “less is more” can make perfect sense in this part of the resume. You don’t need to add all the skills you have, just to make this space look bigger, stick to relevant ones. The company you’re interviewing with is looking out for a specific skill set in their prospective employee. Therefore read the job description carefully and list the skills that they are looking for.

Also, if you have worked on any relevant tool at your previous workplace that they have included in their job description, include it in your resume. It helps recruiters understand how well prepared you are for your new role.

Interests, volunteering, awards

Tailor your interests section according to your job profile. If your job requires you to be an outgoing and good team player, mentioning that you played basketball at state-level is a good idea. Knitting, binge watching sitcoms, playing chess, etc. is not.

Also, be sure to include any volunteering activities or awards (workplace or otherwise) in your resume. Most companies look favorably upon employees who contribute in a positive way to the surrounding community and/or are overachievers.

Languages spoken can be an interesting thing to mention here as well.

Run spell check and perfect the grammar

The worst impression you can make via an otherwise perfectly presented resume, is by having sloppy grammar and frequent spelling mistakes. In making your first impression the last thing you want to come across is careless. Hence it is important that you run your resume through spell checkers such as Grammarly, as well as have 2-3 people proof read your resume. You will be surprised how many errors you can miss out on.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive times, just having a good profile and strong experiences is not enough. One needs to be able to showcase the same to a prospective employer via an effective and concise resume.

Follow these 12 points and we are sure your resume quality would improve from good to great to your best resume, and you can make that great first impression you need to bag your dream job.

Want more? Check out our full list of 23 resume writing tips.

Author bio:
Abhyank Srinet holds a Masters in Management degree from ESCP Europe & has an engineering degree with a specialization in Instrumentation & Control. His interest in the digital landscape motivated him to create an online start up for Masters in Management application consulting (MiM-Essay.com), focused on spreading quality information about the MiM degree & performing application consulting services for clients. He is the chief consultant of the company and takes care of the Business Development and Digital Marketing side of the company. He is very passionate about writing and marketing.