Think about the person who reads your resume. He may have a pile of fifty on the table. He is tired. He still has lunch to look forward to. How long will he spend on your resume?
In my book I put it simply. People who scan dozens of resumes in a few hours cannot look at one for more than 20 to 30 seconds. Whatever you want them to remember about you must be read in the first half minute.
So let me show you how to build a resume for the thirty second reader.
Start with your name
Many students hide their names. They put a title like "Bio-Data" or "Curriculum Vitae" or "Resume" at the top. That is a waste of the best space on the page. The reader knows it is a resume.
Your name should have pride of place. Write it in big, bold letters at the top, about 2 to 4 points bigger than the rest of the text. Spell it exactly as it appears in your school-leaving certificate. If your initials make the name too long, do not expand all of them.
Check your email ID
Under the name come your address, phone number and email ID. Here many students do damage without knowing it. I have seen email IDs like machoman@yahoo.com. I have seen long IDs full of numbers and underscores. An employer is not going to be impressed.
Make a simple ID with your name. And check it every day. A call letter that lands in an inbox you never open is a job lost.
Keep it short
For an entry-level job, one page is enough. If you have a few years of experience, keep it to two pages. Never go beyond three. The ideal is two.
If you have long project details, put them in a separate annexure and say they are available. Your main page then stays clean. The recruiter who wants more can read more. The one who does not want it will not get bored.
Make it easy on the eye
A resume should look good too. Here are the simple rules from the book.
- Use one typeface throughout. You may use another for your name. Two fonts is the maximum.
- Make headings stand out with bold or a bigger size, not with fancy or cursive fonts.
- Keep headings on the left. Centred headings slow the reader down.
- Leave margins. About 1.25 inches on top and 1 inch on the other sides. Small margins make a resume look cramped.
- Put your name on every page. If pages get separated, the recruiter can still trace them.
Do not use full sentences for your experience. Short phrases that carry the matter are enough.
Be specific
This is where most resumes fail. Look at this line: "Worked as software engineer for 2 years." Any software person knows that this tells you nothing. What area? What work?
Now see the line I give in my book for an engineer at Pearlite Industries, Pune. He worked on product planning and prototyping. He set up a firewall and a LAN with Linux and Windows machines. He set up a Linux web server running Apache and wrote Perl code to run on it. The reader now knows exactly what this man can do.
Avoid vague phrases like "have international exposure". What does that mean? Did you sit in an airport surrounded by foreigners? Say the actual thing, but only if it matters for the job.
Do this today
Open your resume right now and do three things.
- Check your name. Is it big, bold and at the top, without a heading above it?
- Check your email ID. Is it simple, and do you open it daily?
- Pick the weakest line in your experience, an internship or project. Rewrite it so that it says what you did, with what, and what came out of it.
When you finish, hand it to a friend and ask him to read it for thirty seconds only. Then ask what he remembers. If he remembers your name and one strong thing, you are on the right track.
Language matters too. Spelling and grammar must be perfect, so ask a friend who is better with language to read it. A mistake in the first line tells the recruiter that you are careless.
This is one chapter from my book Get That Dream Job.
