If you were a Recruiter, would you invite yourself to an interview?
It’s not necessary to write an essay or a long list of everything you have ever done since you were a toddler. A recruiter will look at your resume only for a few minutes, so make sure you present the most relevant to the job skills, experience, and achievements. This is your chance to show off your personality, so don’t hesitate to give a personal touch to the resume. Check out the following simple guidelines and make your CV stands out among the others.
Make it Simple, but Effective
A resume should be a short, ideally one page, document designed to present in the best way why you are a good fit for a job position. Be clear yet detail-oriented. Start with your best qualities, such as technical and soft skills, work experience, education. Highlight any certificates and achievements and avoid to write just job titles. Customize your CV for each job you candidate.
Basics of CV Formatting
Since you have only an A4 document to work with, use text and space wisely. Write your contact information at the top of your resume – name, email address, and phone number. Use a 12 pt or 14 pt font for your name and 10 pt or 11 pt for the body. To gain some more space, adjust the margins. It’s preferable to save it as a PDF file.
Spell Check, Double Check
When it comes to a resume, details really matter. If you want to give a professional first impression on your future employer, be sure that you have corrected any grammar errors, spelling mistakes or unclear sentences.
Show your Profiles
Make your resume modern and more informative by adding links to your online profiles, such as LinkedIn, GitHub, StackOverflow or any other relevant account. Place this info at the top of your CV along with your personal details. Recruiters and employers always like to see more info about you, additionally to a common resume. Ensure that all links work properly and direct to the correct URL addresses.
Take it Personally
Customize. Your resume should be up-to-date, reflecting your current professional achievements and skills. Take some time to edit your CV every time you want to apply to a specific offer.
Career Path Change
What if you have taken a different direction and your past working experience seems irrelevant? Do you remember the summary? Focus on it. Place it under your personal details and then add your current professional skills. If you have worked in customer support, take the chance to mention your soft skills, e.g. you can easily work with others. Highlight your major advantages.
Once you start creating your resume, keep in mind a simple checklist to help you rock your CV!
Info Checklist – Order & Format
- Personal and contact details
- Summary – optional, yet nice to have. You can include your goals if you have a specific job in mind.
- Technical skills – be specific and include any programming languages, documentation or technical writing skills, and similar.
- Soft skills – show off your best personality. Are you a team-player, communicative, and self-disciplined? Write that down.
- Work experience
- Certifications
- Education
- Any projects you were involved with
- Personal interests and hobbies – optional, yet nice to have
- References – optional or if requested by the employer
Top comments (1)
Nice points, Savvina! However, I don't agree that a resume really needs soft skills. For developer positions, they're not so important. As a rule, recruiters find the soft skills out during the interview, so there is no need to clutter up a resume with them. At CV Compiler, we also advise omitting the Summary/Objective section. Instead, one should focus on the detailed description of their recent roles/projects.