5 Easy Ways To Upgrade Your Resume
COVID-19 may have stirred up the employment arena but it is looking more promising as reports show that hiring has seen an uptick in the recent months, as per new data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
Whether you’re heading back into the market to scout out a new job or a college student who is on the lookout for an internship, put your best foot forward with a well-detailed resume.
Sarvesh Agrawal, founder and CEO of recruiting and training platform Internshala shares his steps to make the best impression and come one step closer to scoring that job or internship you’ve been eyeing.
Customize your resume
For every new opportunity you are applying to, tweak your resume based on the requirements of the respective job/internship, and organization. This will include adding your relevant and latest experience for the position you are applying to.
Ensure that you highlight measurable results when talking about your previous work experiences, add details of the projects you worked on as well as the impact that they made. For example, if you worked as a customer support executive, you could mention that you helped xyz number of customers with their grievances on a daily basis.
Create a separate section in your resume to shed light on any skill-based training you have taken which is relevant to the job first before adding other skills or courses in the resume. For instance, if you’re applying for the position of a web developer, make sure that relevant languages and coding knowledge like JavaScript or Python are listed clearly.
Since recruiters are scouring through hundreds and thousands of resumes or CVs a day, ensure you use the keywords that they have used in the job description.
Update the format and basic information
While earlier it was commonplace to have long detailed resumes, recruiters today mostly prefer precise and simple ones.
Keep your resume short by retaining only what is relevant to the jobs you are applying to. The length of an ideal resume shouldn’t exceed more than one and a half pages. If you’ve completed a few years in the workforce, it might be ideal to drop some of your school and college-related achievements unless they’re very crucial to your work.
Another common mistake is forgetting to update basic information as you may have been using the same resume for many years. Apart from contact information, you should also add links to your relevant and updated social media profiles like LinkedIn, Behance, or GitHub. This helps the recruiter in understanding your professional career and work better.
Update your objective statement
We are all guilty of writing objective statements from templates available over the web. This can be off-putting for the recruiters as it may not be a proper representation of your professional prowess and ambitions. There could also be a gap between what you have written in the rest of your resume and the objective statement.
A good practice would be to summarize your skills and experience and how you wish to implement them impactfully in your new role. This will give the recruiters an impression of your earnestness regarding the job and the organization.
Adding a quick mention of your interest areas or any new learnings you hope to gain could also work in your favour.
Highlight relevant soft skills
A resume is incomplete without the necessary soft skills like communication and critical thinking that have become more important than ever due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Employers now look for traits that indicate the agility/adaptability, creativity, ownership skills, and time management skills of an employee depending on the role.
Read more: Tips To Networking And Landing An Internship While Remote Learning
Always make sure to add examples representing any skills. For instance, if you mention you have high ownership skills, you can also add in your experience about a project you led and handled end-to-end in what amount of time.
Proofread your resume before every application
Always check for any grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors in your resume. Go through it yourself and send it to a friend or colleague for a secondary check before sharing it externally. This could go a long way in avoiding mishaps and ruining the immediate impression you create in the eyes of the recruiter.
(Edited by Amrita Ghosh)
