How To Write Effective Resume

Effective Resume Writing

A resume is a medium for advertising yourself, its the first most means which you use to present yourself and try to claim that you are the best choice to your prospects employer. Through your resume you have to showcase your major assets like:

Qualifications,

Experience,

Achievements,

Capabilities, and

Qualities

You have to prepare your resume in such a way that it gives impression in first look that you are a perfect fit for the job you have applied. An employer hardly takes 10-15 seconds to make a decision about your interview call after looking at your resume. If your resume is well written then definitely you will be in the shortlisted candidates does not matter you have required potential or not but you will get a call otherwise your resume will become a part of either recycle bin or dustbin, again it does not matter if you are Einstein or Newton.

The first draft of your resume may not be so impressive because a resume is always an evolving document which improves over the period of time, so keep modifying and improving it after its first draft and keep its different versions with you.

Now without complicating the things, I will take you through step by step to create a great resume for you. I'm assuming you have Microsoft Word to write your resume, so now just follow the following steps:

Step 1: Address Section

This section will be on top of your resume giving a detail about your name, address, phone number and e-mail address. Keep this section left aligned and put a bold line below to the section to separate it from rest of the document as follows:

Mr/Ms NAME

Contact No: +91 9876543210

Email Id: adcdefgh1234@gmail.com

If you are currently working then you can specify your company name just below to your name as follows:

Mr/Ms NAME

Arth I-Soft

Prahlad Nagar, Ahmedabad, Gujarat - INDIA

Contact No: +91 9876543216

Email Id: abchef1992@gmail.com

Step 2: Summary Section

This section will start with a heading called Summary and followed by listing down your over-all experience, achievements, certifications and positive attributes etc. It is very similar to a movie trailer where editor keeps all great scenes from the movie and after watching that trailer you get excited to watch complete movie. You will have to choose attractive & heavy words while documenting this section.

To draft summary section you will have to think a while with peaceful mind, jot down great points about yourself on a plain paper and check to make them more impressive and effective. If they are not leaving any impact on the reader then there is no point in including those points in the summary section.

If you are a fresh graduate then you should specify about your small but impressive projects you have done at university, highlight your achievements and project capabilities etc.

SUMMARY:

A System Software Engineer graduated from Delhi University and having overall 4 years of extensive experience in developing state-of-the-art software modules for telecom industry specializing with BSS & OSS.

Step 3: Education Detail

Because you already have given summary of your experience and achievements, so now let's start telling about our educational background. There are many organizations who give lot of preference to your educational background. So it is important to tell about your academic records. You should put your highest degree on top and then lower qualifications at lower levels.

This is extremely important to give information about your position, rank, percentage or CPI along with degree or certification otherwise many employers would throw your resume in dustbin if you don't give clear picture of your educational background. Now lets see one example on how to put educational records in a resume.

Education Detail

MTech in Computer Engineering (2015) from IIT Bombay with 9.5 CP BTech in Computer Engineering (2014) from Pune University with 85.84 % marks
10+2 with Maths, Chemistry & Physics (2010) from Gujarat Board with 77.24%.
High School (2010) from CBSE board with 70.20% marks
Secured first position in Software Developer during BTech as well as MTech.
Gold medalist at 10+2 level due to highest rank in Chemistry & Physics.

If you have done various certifications and training then I would recommend to add a separate section for Training & Certifications just below to Educational Section.

Step 4: Technical Skills

Next section in your resume will present your Technical Skills. This section will start with telling your major skills on which you have good command. So list down all the skills first where you are fully confident and then keep rest of the skills at lower levels. Have a look at the following example where candidate has good command over Pro*C and C but less experienced in Perl so put Pro*C and C first and Perl later. This is important to note that all the lines given below are not required in all the cases. If you know only one skill then just tell about that skill, for example if you don't have any experience in any protocol then don't give that line in your resume.

Technical Skills

Programming Languages: C, Pro*C, C++, JAVA and PERL

Operating Systems: Red Hat Linux 9.0, Windows XP and Solaris 2.0

Tools & Technologies: Front Page-2000, CGI, J2EE, JSP, CORBA

Databases: MySQL, Sybase

Protocols: SMTP, FTP, PO3, IMAP

Others: Socket Programming, Multithreading, SDLC, OOP, UML

Step 5: Projects Detail

Here comes real story and this is really important to show your all the projects, assignments etc. Reader should understand what exactly you have done in past. Here you will put hands on experience with different type of projects, people and tools and technologies. You have to be clear on what was your, organizations, year of the project, roles, responsibilities, value add, achievements etc. on each and every project or position. You should also mention about what were the tools and technologies you have used during that project.

Projects Detail

1 - Library Information System [National Library, INDIA ]
Duration: Mar 2005 - Jun 2010
  Team Size: 3
Role Played: Developer and Tester
Skills Used: Pro*C, Red Hat Linux, MySQL
This system simplifies day to day operation of a library which enables you to maintain library catalogue on electronic media and to keep a record of all the issued books in a particular day. Using this system, a user can generate a report of all the available books for a particular subject or ISBN and a report can be generated for all the issued books for a particular subject or ISBN.

2 - Tiny Editor Implementation [Gujarat University, INDIA]
  Duration: Jan 2005 - Feb 2011
  Team Size: 1
  Role Played: Designer, Developer and Tester
  Skills Used: Java, MySQL and Red Hat Linux
This was a small but useful text file editor which enables you to edit any text files available on Linux System. Using this editor user can open new or an existing file in text mode and can update its content and then finally that file can be saved on hard disk.

Step 6: Strengths

After giving a complete detail of all the projects, now you can tell about your major strengths. Look at the following examples, may be you don't have all the strengths so list down only whatever you posses:

Strengths

   Good oral, written & presentation skills
      A high tolerance of stress and enjoys responsibilities
  Quick learner with good grasping ability
  Action-oriented and result-focused
  Lead & work as a team in an organized way
      Great time management skill

Step 7: Extra Curricular

This section is optional because it is always not necessary that you would have been involved in some extra curricular activities same time for various roles its not required to have any extra curricular. Some time this section may have lot of weightage specially when your resume reader and you have same curriculum. I'm giving you a simple example to list down your curricular activities

Extra Curricular

Have been a member of University Technical Council Won first prize for debate at inter state level competition Played Cricket at inter state level Mono acting, Singing and Reading

Step 8: Personal Detail

This will be the last but mandatory section of your resume but will provide all important information about you. A simple and easy example is given here:

Extra Curricular

  Date of Birth: 18th July 1992
  Sex & Status: Male & Single
  Nationality: INDIAN
  Languages Known: English, Hindi, Gujarati
  Passport Number: AB0915538 valid till 2025\

Make Sure:

//Don't Say: Excellent with foriegn languages.

Do Say : Fluent in English & Spanish,

and proficient in French.

//Don't Say: Skilled typist

Do Say : 70WPM typist

If you have no work experience, your résumé SHOULD NOT be more than a single page.

Don't include too many phone numbers, email addresses or addresses.

Don't prepare too big resume. It should be as precise as possible.

Grammar, spelling and punctuation are correct.

Send a cover letter along with your resume

Do not attach / send photographs.

Carry extra copies of your résumé with you.

Be aware of all the above points

Different Types of Resume Formats:

Download the resume formats.

Resume Format-1

Resume Format-2

Resume Format-3

Resume Format-4

Resume Format-5

Best of Luck

How To Write Effective Resume

Effective Resume Writing