A well-written resume makes a good impression on the company that an individual is applying for so it is important to make sure that the resume that one prepares will stand out. It will be helpful to make a guideline on how one wishes his or her profile to appear on the hands of the evaluator. Here are 15 do’s and don’ts in writing a resume:
- Do write your resume in a clean sheet of letter size paper and make sure that it will be printed neatly in readable font. The last thing you would want is your potential boss struggling to read through your credentials and getting him pissed in the end because of its poorly-written quality.
- Do make sure that your name is spelled out larger enough for your employer to read and within good proximity to your photo.
- Do make sure that your photo will not overwhelm the size of the letter size paper. A 2x2 photo is enough to make sure that the one reading your resume can easily recognize you from a crowd. The photo that you will choose should make a professional impression in itself and not look as if it is taken from your Facebook profile page.
- Do follow a format that will make your resume standout. You can either follow a chronological format or a functional format depending on which one you think would work to your advantage and best showcase your skills and capabilities as an employee.
- Do make sure that your resume is straightforward to keep the hiring manager or recruiter from boredom over reading irrelevant items in your resume.
- Don’t include irrelevant work experience, skills, and the likes in your resume as this will only confuse the hiring manager.
- Do keep in mind that a reader-friendly resume will most likely be more appealing to the person evaluating your resume. You might want to consider a bulleted style resume as this gives a clear enumeration of your skills.
- Do keep the pages of your resume to a maximum of two pages. Apparently, a one-page rule was strictly adhered to but this no longer matters if all your credentials are relevant to the position that you are applying for. Just remember that if you have less than half a page on the second page, it is wiser to condense or fit everything into one full page because a half-filled page is not appealing to look at.
- Do present your resume with a sharp focus considering that employers screen resumes in less than a minute, so it is best to show your employer at a glance what you are good at and what exactly you want to do.
- Do consider putting your qualifications in a specific section on your resume for clarity and organization. This also helps in going for that resume with a sharp focus.
- Don’t use personal pronouns to address yourself like I, me, my, and myself. It should be as narrative as it can.
- Do list your job information in order of importance duly accorded to the job that you are applying for. For example, you are applying for a managerial position, put your experience as a management trainee first in line so that the evaluator will immediately recognize your potential.
- Do emphasize transferable skills especially if you are going for a career shift.
- Don’t list too much experience in your resume. Again, only put the relevant ones. So many shifts in jobs can give an impression that you cannot stay too long in a particular job. It could also give an impression to employers that you are already too expensive to keep because of your credentials in such a short and unproven period of time.
- And lastly, don’t ever lie on your resume! It will definitely bring out a can of worms once you get busted.