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Resume Preparation Tips
Posted Date: 24 Mar 2008 Resource Type: Articles/Knowledge Sharing Category: Jobs & Interviews
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Posted By: Lora Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 5
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Resume Preparation
In preparing to write your resume, remember that you can only count on an employer to spend twenty seconds scanning your resume before deciding whether to review it further or put it aside. The key is to design the format in such a way that it leads the employer's eye to words that speak to his/her needs. Obviously then, effective resumes are developed by individuals who have thoroughly researched the organizations they want to work for, have identified the specific job they want, and have figured out what they have to offer.
In addition, well designed resumes have these characteristics in common:
1. Visual appeal, easy to read layout, and high quality reproduction;
2. Highlights strengths and links them to employer's needs; minimizes or
excludes irrelevant experience;
3. Presents the most important information first;
4. Entirely free from any errors: spelling, typographical, punctuation, or grammatical;
5. Succinct and organized; does not exceed two pages.
point out that the categories of information you include on your resume should provide answers to these questions:
1. Contact section: Who are you and how can you be reached?
2. Objective statement: What do you want to do?
3. Education section: What have you learned?
4. Experience/Employment section: What can you do? What have you done?
5. Professional activities and accomplishments: How have you been recognized?
6. Miscellaneous: What else do they want to know about you?
Sequence the categories according to what is most important to the employer and your career objective. A recent college graduate with limited experience should usually put the education section first since it is the most significant qualification. Education should also be listed first when, as in the case of teaching, law, medicine, or engineering, education is a qualifying requirement. In a situation where an applicant wants to
emphasize significant work or extracurricular experience or when an employer seeks to fill jobs in fields such as sales, public relations, or merchandising, the experience or work history category may be listed first.
1. Contact Information
Begin your resume with your name by capitalizing or using bold type. Include street address, city, state, and zip code. Include phone number(s) where you can be reached weekdays, 9am-5pm. Designate your home phone with an "H," and work number with "W," or a "Messages" number.
2. Career/Job Objective
This is recommended only for recent graduates or entry level personnel. Experience and professional job seekers rarely include it. This component of the resume can be very challenging to write. The purpose of the objective statement is to inform the reader of your career goals and qualifications. The statement should be written specifically enough to let the reader know that you have a focus to your job search. If you are considering a variety of objectives, you may want to relay the relevant objective in an accompanying cover letter.
3. Educational Highlights
This section is most effective when you have experiences from your education that are impressive and/or directly relate to your objective. Adding this section is useful when you have developed skills and specific knowledge through your education rather than work experience. This section can be used to highlight coursework, research, or special knowledge that complements your objective. This information is useful in a resume of entry level candidates and recent graduates.
An alternative to highlighting courses is to list the skills and knowledge acquired through important courses and research.
Examples: Developed model investment portfolio for Fortune 500 company. Analyzed revenue and expense history using state-of-the-art computer simulation programs. Designed promotional campaign for new service a targeted market.
Summary information about your undergraduate and graduate education should be included in your resume. List the name and location of the school, time period or date of degree, the degree received, and academic honors, e.g. Phi Beta Kappa, significant scholarships or fellowships. You may also list any continuing education and significant professional training but do not list every course or seminar you have attended. In general, the more recently you have attended college, the more education related information you may want to provide as you will most likely have relatively less work experience.
Start with your most recent degree or the program in which you are currently enrolled. List other degrees or relevant education in reverse chronological order.
Highlight your degree by using bold type, capital letters or underlining.
If the degree is relevant to your job objective, begin with degree and emphasis, followed by university, location of university, and date of graduation or anticipated date of graduation. Example: M.P.A., Masters of Public Administration, Annamalai University, Annamalai nagar, TN, India, May 1995.
If degree/program is not directly related to current job objective, begin with the university, followed by the location, degree and emphasis, and graduation date.
If you are within two semesters of graduation, do not use "expected" or "anticipated" with month/year of graduation.
If you are an entry level candidate or recent graduate and have a high GPA, include it on your resume. You may want to highlight your GPA on a new line, or in an educational highlights section. Note: Some employers believe no GPA on a resume indicates an poor GPA. Employers hiring experienced professionals generally care only that you have the degree.
If your education relates to your objective and is within the past three years, it should be the first section. If not, education should follow the work experience section of your resume.
4. Employment and or Experience Summary
A brief summary of qualifications can condense an extensive background by emphasizing experiences and accomplishments in brief phrases. The qualifications summary is accomplishment-oriented and provides an overview of your work experience. A summary is most appropriated for someone with substantial experience, for someone who is changing careers and wants to demonstrate transferable skills, or for someone with an eclectic background.
In general, you should list, in successive order for each position you have held, your employer, position title, dates (year to year), a brief description of your position, and accomplishments. You need to devote little space to explain commonly known responsibilities for positions such as city manager, police chief or public works director. You will probably devote more space for positions such as assistant city manager, city engineer, and similar jobs. You should also indicate the size of the budget and number of employees for whom you were responsible. Give brief, illustrative examples of your responsibilities and accomplishments. This is where you have the opportunity to tailor (while being accurate and truthful) your resume to what the employer is seeking. At least for your current position, indicate your base salary, not the top of your range.
Begin with your current/most recent position and work backward, chronologically. Devote more space to recent employment.
If your job titles relate to your current job objective, start each position description with job titles. If not, begin with the organization.
Follow job title and organizational information with the organization's city and state.
Use the first and last month and year to describe dates of employment.
Describe the last three to five positions in detail. Summarize earlier positions unless relevant to your objective.
Do not show every position change with each employer. Only list the most recent and describe promotions.
Do not repeat skills that are common to several positions.
Within each listed position, stress the major accomplishments and responsibilities that demonstrate your competency. It is not necessary to include all responsibilities, as they will be assumed by employers.
Tailor your position descriptions to future job/career objectives.
One-page resumes are preferred for entry-level positions.
Two-Three page resumes are preferred for experienced persons.
5.Professional Activities and Accomplishments
This part of your resume offers you the opportunity to provide insight into your career development. You should be selective and complete, listing such items as memberships in professional associations and offices held, professional registrations, honors received, and major articles or publications you have written. Do not list every article or every speech you may have given or every conference you have attended. Emphasize quality - this section of the resume should help you to demonstrate you are current and active in your profession.
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Responses
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| Author: jalaj 21 Apr 2008 | Member Level: Diamond Points : 5 | When coming to resume preparation,
Our(Job seeker) target is :-
1)Resume has to reach the client.(Once it crossed all the middle layers, then only it will reach)
2)Resume has to shortlist at the client place.
3)Resume has to be impressive. Once client looks at ur resume, then he/she has to get the feeling that "Why cant we interview this candidate?"
To make the resume impressive, i will give some suggestions.
Resume outlook:-
1)Summary
2)Technical Skills
3)Certifications and Education
4)Projects
When the client sees your resume, He will read the summary of ur resume, so that he/she will get complete idea about your work.
I suggest to include around 10 to 15 points in summary. So the first page(full page or 75% page) tells about your summary.
Next section is skills :- Put all the skills you know.
Third section is certifications and education :- Even you dont have certiciations, you can put. They may ask when you wrote? what version? how much percentage you got.
Projects : This plays another main role in selecting ur resume.
I will give one example for this section.
Duration : <>
Project : <>
Client: <>
Senior J2EE Developer
Description : << You can tell in detail when they ask about the project in the interview. >>
Responsibilities:
.Involved in gathering business requirements from the client.
.Involved in preparing detail design document for the <> module.
.Created class diagrams and sequence diagrams using Eclipse
.Created action classes, form classes for module <> using struts framework.
.Created jsps for <> module and tested those pages by deploying them in wsad.
.Used design patterns like MVC, Singleton, Business delegate
.Used ANT as build tool.
.Used Hibernate for mapping objects to the relational database.
. etc.. it is good to have around 10 points atleast for each project.
Environment: Java, J2EE, JSP, STRUTS, EJB, WEBSPHERE, WSAD, ORACLE, Hibernate, ANT.
note: make sure that , you will not repeat the responsibility points in all projects.
The client will concentrate on last 3 projects.
Summary and Project responsibilities plays key role in selecting your resume.
What client expects from job seeker's resume?
The client will see whether the candidate(client is going to interview..) has done the same type of job before or not. So the client is more specific in seeing your summary and responsibilities in your last few projects. <>
What client expects from Jobseeker(while interviewing..)?
The client want to check with you, exactly regarding your work in ur previous projects.
So, in the interview, the most general questions are ,
1)tell about u
2)tell ur responsibilities in ur last project.
Once you answer these questions properly(and promptly), then the client will ask few tech. questions related to your work.
Other point, i forgot to highlight till now is:
Communication skills and Management skills.
These two are very important for a job seeker.
If your communication skills are good, then you are 50% selected.
Once you got the project and joined in the company, then Management skills concept will come into picture.
You need to show your management skills while u r at work.
I will give some examples.
1)Always make sure that you need to behave like experienced professional. You need to manage like that.
Dont tell to your colleagues also, even they became friends.
2)Even some guys ask some tech. questions, tell them that you are not sure. dont tell "NO"/"Dont know" answer to any question.
3)Easy going with all colleagues. Maintain good relationship with all team members, instead of doing ur work simply.
4)Update ur senior member(lead/manager) with ur work status.
5)sometimes ur colleagues may ask q's like when u came to usa? etc.. you have to be very careful .. because u put some exp. in the resume.
6)Dont get tensed at any time. Always behave like a experienced professional.
Finally i can say like this : you need to manage the work with ur communication skills.
So Communication and Management skills are very important.
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