Your resume is one of the most important weapons that can help you nail your job and start up your career. Now, your resume isn’t something that is simply made in just a few minutes. If you want to craft a winning resume, then you need to take note of all the things that you need to put inside. Remember that resume crafting is an art. When you create your resume, you want to introduce yourself, provide an overview of your career to further market yourself, and simply impress your employers. Here are a few things to check before you hand out your resume:
5 Things to Make Sure to Include
Contact Information
This is probably one of the most important parts because this allows the company to contact you. These contact information include the phone number, email address, home address, and landline number. You may also include your LinkedIn URL if you have.
An Outline of Your Career
This would include all of your jobs in the past, as well as details on what you did. Take note that you should only include the jobs that are relevant to the job that you are applying because the employer is looking for someone with the most experience in the field that he or she is working in. If you are talking directly to the head of the business, you will be scrutinized as to how your experience can help the company so only include relevant information.
Accomplishments
Aside from your career outline, you need to include your accomplishments and achievements. This would include both your academic and job accomplishments. For example, you can add cum laude or honors in your resume. For your work accomplishments, you could add an employee of the month title or top 10 workers, etc. This will help the employer measure your strengths.
Figures and Metrics
Always include numbers in your accomplishments as this will allow employers to quantitatively measure your skills. For example, if you were a manager, list down how many people were under you and such.
Links or Titles of your Work
Depends on what field you are applying for, it helps to show your portfolio. For example, if you are applying for a writer position, include some titles or URLs of written material you wrote. Same thing goes for if you are applying for a graphic artist position and such.
5 Things to Exclude
Exaggerative Adjectives
Those in business can smell exaggeration a mile away. If you use too many exaggerative adjectives while writing your essay, you will give the impression that you are all talks and no real substance, so avoid doing this.
Past Salaries
Do not ever mention your past salaries as this will turn off those in business. Let the employer him or herself ask you what your expected salary is. You may reference your previous salary when you are asked this question but never include it in your resume.
Reference Details
If you have references, don’t include the contact details in your resume unless you’ve gotten your reference’s approval. If not, you may just put, “References given upon request”.
Document Details
You don’t need to provide all of your document details like your passport number, driver’s license number or social security number. All of these can follow once you’re accepted.
Too Much Personal Information
Depending on the job you are applying for, you do not need to add too many personal details. For example, you don’t need to include height, weight, race, religion, hair color, eye color or marital status. Some jobs require this information but you don’t need to include them in your resume unless specifically stated.
When crafting your resume, these are some of the things that you should include and should exclude. Always remember that your resume is your ticket to making a good first impression. If you can’t make a good impression with your resume, you won’t even get to the interview part. This short guide can help you discern some of the things that you should put and some of the things you really shouldn’t include.