Your curriculum vitae should be made in a way so that all relevant details about you are provided to the reader. Recruiters and talent acquisition managers get hundreds of CVs to go through for any particular job. Hence, they cannot devote much time to read your CV. You need to present every little detail about you in a compact manner.
What should you include in a CV?
Before getting down to making your CV, you need to understand what you need to keep in your CV and what you need to leave out.
- Limit your resume to only one page. No HR manager spends more than a minute to look at a CV hence you should utilize the space provided within this page to fit in all the relevant information about you.
- Make tables to enter your educational information. Include columns for name of the institution, board, the percentage obtained and the year of graduation. Start entering with your highest qualification obtained.
- Include only relevant professional experience. If you have worked for some company then you can leave out your internship details. Write in the name of the company, the period that you have worked for and the position that you have held. If you have space, write in brief about your job.
- Do not include too many personal details. Include only your contact information. Give your name as the heading of the resume and write in your address and other contact information as the subtitle. That way, you will be saving a lot of space to write in your strengths.
- After writing in the content for every main heading, enter a few salient features about it. For example, if you had won any award as a scholar or in your old office, you can include the details of that.
- If you have won accolades in extra-curricular activities, then don’t forget to mention that. However, be careful as to what you want to put in. For example, if you have won some competition at the national level, then you may leave out details of any school or college level tournament that you have won.
Using an Online Resume Builder
If you are unsure about how to write your resume, you can use the online resume builder offered by most jobs site. These websites take you through several steps where you will be required to enter your information. At the end of it all, you will be provided a soft copy of your tailor made CV to download.
There may be certain terms and sections that may be irrelevant for you when you are getting your CV made through this professional CV builder. Therefore, instead of jobs site, you can try out some online classifieds websites which create your resume within minutes. They require you to type in some basic information about you using which they create your CV. You do not need to upload your photo and any other detail that is not applicable in your case. Log in and see for yourself!
The first thing that an individual forwards to a company for a job is his/her curriculum vitae or resume. A resume is a summary of all the achievements of a person on a certain career track. It includes details of schooling, college, professional degrees earned, internships completed and past jobs along with personal details. A resume is supposed to give an employer basic idea about an applicant’s work and personal profile.
Before looking at graduation mark sheets and certificates, a recruiter looks at the resume of an individual to judge whether s/he fits the bill. Once the resume passes the scrutiny test, his/her certificates are looked into. Hence, forwarding a good resume is of utmost importance.
There are certain things that one should bear in mind about writing a resume:
- Keep a resume as short as possible- Given the condition of the job market in the country, a recruiter has to sift through hundreds of resumes before drawing up a list of potential candidates for an interview. Hence, the recruiter does not have much time to read through a resume. It has been opined that recruiters do not spend more than 12 seconds on a single resume.
- Abstract data as much as possible- The information in a resume needs to be presented in a way that gives a recruiter the largest amount of information about you in the shortest space possible. You can achieve such a feat if you follow this format:
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- Use tables to represent your academic qualification. Make a few columns in the table and write in your school’s name, college’s name, university’s name etc. It would be best to start with the highest degree you have earned.
- Use bullet points to highlight special features about your academic life like holding offices in school or college etc.
- When you are mentioning your work experience, mention the name of the organization, the location, the period of work and the post that you held in the organization. Do not go into many details.
- Do not mention unnecessary personal information about yourself. For e.g. if you are applying for a position of a data analyst, there is hardly much point in mentioning your height, weight, blood group etc.
- If you have participated in a lot of extra-curricular activities and have won a lot of accolades, then mention only those which are important in your field.
- As the time given to your resume by a recruiter is very limited, it would be best to limit your resume to a single page.
Many people find it difficult to write such a resume. They can always seek help from site for employment for tips on writing a crisp resume. Once the resume is written, a person can upload it on their profile on a job hunting site or online classifieds and see offers pour in. A well written resume can go a long way to get you noticed by a potential recruiter.