The Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Professional Resume Making

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Professional Resume Making

Professional Resume Making can be quite tedious, isn’t it? A resume maker has to think right from the contents of the resume to the design and language to be employed. And in spite of all the brainstorming, time and energy invested, the end result often turns out to be rejection.

What is it that a resume maker needs to do to ensure that his/her resume gets through the initial scrutiny and that he/she receives a call for an interview? How to make a resume that is professionally appealing?

While the instant solution to this problem of how to create a resume that has a decent resume template and can be considered a good resume is to seek the help of professional resume writers. However, a resume maker shouldn’t be so keen on adopting what should but be the last resort.

In this blog post, we present to you the ultimate cheat sheet that every professional resume maker desperately looks for. These are some of the most simple and yet most overlooked aspects of a resume format:

Have a professional email address

Resume writing implies that one has to furnish one’s contact details. Whether you choose to drop a hard copy of your resume at the office or email the soft copy, your email address is presented in both.

And having immature, funny and unprofessional email addresses indirectly tells the recruiter that “I am not very good at separating the personal from the professional.” This is usually enough reason for the employers to turn you down.

They might as well stop reading any further and consider the next resume in line. Therefore it is vital that you have a plain and straight email address as a resume maker especially for your official purposes even if you choose to have another email address for other purposes.

Another reason why having a professional email address is important is to avoid spam and directly receive emails that are of use to you. I am one of those individuals who use the same email address for all purposes and I can’t even begin describing how messy my inbox looks.

From new post alerts from all YouTube channels you subscribe to, to newsletters from various websites you don’t even remember visiting, you tend to receive all kinds of mail and in this process, often the important ones pertaining to jobs you’ve applied for taking a back seat.

Customized resume for every job

Every job that you apply for probably receives a minimum of hundred other job applications. You can imagine the competition you will be facing.

If you believe that framing the perfect resume and sending it out everywhere will fetch you job offers then I am afraid you’re up to be disappointed because if your resume isn’t in line with what the job demands then you barely stand any chance of being short-listed!

As resume maker, you should take a little pain to make a few changes here and there in your primary resume or seek the help of some online resume maker for the same if you are too reluctant to do it on your own.

One way of going about this is conducting a careful study of the job description and jotting down the precise requirements of the job and expectations of the firm.

The next step would be to frame the sentences and points in your resume in such a way that the recruiter is compelled to believe that indeed you are what he/she is looking for.

Mention of ATS friendly keywords

For those who never heard what an ATS is, it stands for Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and is basically an electronic technique employed by hiring authorities wherein the resumes you send undergo a machine-based scrutiny.

The machine looks for particular keywords in your resume that are most relevant to the job. Failing to find these would mean that your resume is most likely not going to be short-listed.

ATS is a relatively new method and hence its lack of awareness among job seekers. Always Google the keywords that are relevant to the job sought and make it a point to mention them in your resume.

In today’s time, only when a resume maker uses the ATS friendly words does he stand a chance to go through this initial mechanized test.

A legible font

On the very first resume I submitted to an agency a few years back, I put in a lot of effort to frame everything in a way that would please the employer and therefore I thought that using my favorite font would be the best. And so I did! And alas I never heard anything from that firm.

Well, over the years when I gathered more knowledge about stuff, I realized that my favorite font does not fit the requirements of a professional resume!

As a resume maker, you should always use legible and formal fonts such as Arial or Calibri. The blunder I did was that I used Comic sans which is but very childish looking.

Therefore a vital thing every resume maker should focus on is the use of fonts that are readable and in a size between 10-12. Font sizes less than or more than that is not advisable to be used on resumes.

Reference to keywords mentioned in the job description

Like I always say, you must give the employer what he is looking for and not what you have prepared. As a resume maker, you must know how to use your limited skills in such a way that you allure the recruiter.

That is where your wittiness and smartness comes to test. You might be a good teacher but what if the post is of a librarian?

In such a case, you as a resume maker have to tell them that having had the experience of teaching students for this many years, you are well-versed with a wide range of books and would be just right for the job because you would be able to categorize books into sections better than others.

So how do you go about this? The simplest way is to keenly observe the job description and understand what exactly are the skills the recruiters are looking for in a candidate.

With that done, you can go ahead and frame a resume where you put in all those keywords in a way that I did the above example.

Always revise for errors

The task of a resume maker doesn’t end with a mere formulation of a resume. Just like our teachers advised us to revise our answer sheets before submitting, so does this cheat sheet advice to revise your resume for grammatical errors, typos or other errors in the information provided.

If you religiously revise your resume then you stand no chance of getting rejected for trivial reasons like typing errors which are quite embarrassing reasons to not get short-listed for!

Focus on achievements and not positions

When mentioning your experience in a resume, a resume maker must always try and emphasize more on end results rather than mentioning the prestigious positions you held.

You might have been the event manager of a company of repute but try focusing and mentioning more of the various events you managed and organized successfully that was beneficial for the company.

But this is easier said than done, isn’t it? I know that putting together your achievements could be tedious but nonetheless, you should try doing it as it will come to your aid.

And in case you aren’t confident on how to go about it then consider seeking the help of resume writing services available online.

Our site too provides this much-needed assistance to resume makers who face difficulty, so do visit us at CV Owl where our experts are always ready and glad to make your resume better.

Add links to your social media accounts and personal blogs etc

It’s a world where virtual contact and impressions get formulated faster than real encounters. And hence it is so important that you mention the links to all of your social media accounts so that the employers can locate you online and understand your true worth.

Also, if a resume maker is skilled at other things such as blogging or runs a YouTube channel then there is no reason why he/she shouldn’t mention that. A resume is the only place where bragging doesn’t make you look flamboyant, make sure you use it to your advantage!

Have a decent cover letter

The best resume format always talks about having a cover letter that is decently framed and provides a just introduction to what follows in the resume.

The task of a resume maker is not confined to writing a resume alone; a resume maker must also formulate the cover letter approaching a given firm in a condescending yet humble way.

Always follow up post submitting a resume

Just like contesting the elections alone won’t win you a seat in the governing body, similarly, submitting a well-framed resume alone is hardly likely to fetch you a job.

As a resume maker, once you are done framing and submitting the best resume that you humanly could, you should try and follow up with the hiring firm. Confused!?

Well, you are not supposed to go to their office and ask every day if you’ve made through because it gets you thrown out instead. What you need to do is follow up via unofficial means.

You can befriend one of their employees and get the inner information regarding recruitments out. These are mere tactics of getting oneself an edge over other candidates in this world of cutthroat competition.

We hope this piece on the ultimate cheat sheet every resume maker looks for has been of some help to you and would assist you when you sit to create your resume.

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