Resume the Résumé

The first impression is the last impression, and your resume forms your first impression to the recruiter. Read on to learn how to make a lasting first impression.

Welcome to One Up Your Career – the daily info-vitamin capsule ?? by Unnati to help you growth hack your career.

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Hi Folks,

The job search has always been nervousing (it’s an actual word!) and exciting. The first step of a job search is preparing a fantastic resume. You invest time, energy, and sometimes money to write a captivating resume making sure no important point is missed. As part of my work, I come across hundreds of resumes every day. And let me share a secret with you. On average, a recruiter spends less than a minute on a resume for the initial screening process. So, that means you have less than a minute to make that first impression. Tough, but not impossible.

This week, I will be sharing insights on writing an effective resume. To begin with, note the common mistakes that I often notice in resumes.

The misaligned table ?

Text running outside the box ?

Change of font style and inconsistent spacing ?

Resume Basics

Let us start with a few points to keep in mind while working on your resume.

Stick to one Font

There should be one font throughout your resume. Change of font style looks unprofessional and jarring to eyes. While there is no rule regarding fonts that can be used in a resume, it is a best practice to use a classic font. Times New Roman, Calibri, and Arial are some of the classic fonts. The reason behind it is to make the resume legible especially when it is text heavy. You can try a new font according to your liking but a cursive font is difficult to read. Standard font size should be between 10.5 to 12 and slightly larger for the headings.

Space-it

Have a single line spacing in the whole body of content. For separating major sections like work experience from the Education section, use double spacing. Making adjustments in the spacing is very important to control the length of the resume and fitting data in tables. You can use tables and boxes to list skills and certifications but make sure of a few things. First, the text should be not running out of the box or on to a different page. Second, it should be legible and neat.

Save it in PDF format

A resume on a word document, when opened on a different computer, gets the alignment changed. The words overlap and it becomes messy. Especially, if you are using images or icons in your resume. Always send the PDF version of your resume unless otherwise told by the hiring manager.

Run a Spell Check

It goes without saying that a resume with incorrect spelling and grammatical errors is more likely to get rejected. Apart from screening it yourself, take the help of softwares to run a spell check and fix grammatical errors. There are several free tools available online like Grammarly for this.

Want to know a standard resume format? Wait for the next newsletter to find out.

Do you have any questions related to job search or career enhancement? Ask us here.

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