The Six Hallmarks of Great Resume
- Accomplishment Oriented ("gets things done"):
A great resume enlists accomplishments instead of responsibilities. Accomplishments tell the future employer that you can get things done and you are result oriented. A common mistake that many people do is that they list out their responsibilities in the job versus their accomplishments in the job. Doing so does not say much about one's capabilities to the potential employer. An accomplishment centric example is following:
"Led entrance strategy for Foobar product in China, and successfully persuaded CEO to refocus division on the enterprise market, resulting in a 7 percent increase in profit."
The counterpart to accomplishment oriented resume is responsibility oriented resume, which focuses participation rather than accomplishment. Gayle strongly encourages in favor of creating an accomplishment oriented resume as employers look for doers and winners. An example of responsibility oriented resume will look like following:
"Analyzed new markets and explored potential entrance strategies for China division". - Quantifiable Results:
The accomplishments mentioned in the resume should be quantifiable. Quantifiable result provides a concrete context for your success, making your accomplishments more relatable and believable. It also reduces vagueness in your accomplishment claims. If you say, you helped increased sales in the company, but don't say by how much you have increased the sales, there is no context as to how well you have done. An example of resume point that incorporates the strategy of quantifiable results is following:
Original and Vague: "Implemented crash reporter and used results to fix biggest causes of crashes."
This example can be improved in the following way:
Newly quantified version: "Implemented crash reporter and used results to fix three biggest causes of crashes, leading to a 45 percent reduction in customer support calls." - Well Targeted
The resume should not be a one-size-fits-all resume. It should be well targeted for the job or internship that you are applying to and also should be well targeted to the company as well. If you want to tailor your resume for the position and the company need, you need to research about the company and should try to answer the following questions: what are the company's biggest issues and how would my role would impact the biggest issues of the company?
Even if you don't have the experience in solving the exact problems that the biggest issues that the company is facing, you might have skills that will be helpful for the company in solving those biggest issues. - Universally Meaningful
Resume should be universally meaningful in the sense that people outside the domain will be able to understand and relate to the resume contents. Other way to say this is that the resume should not filled with bunch of technical jargons that readers outside the domain might face hard time to relate. If a technical jargon is necessary to convey the meaning, it should accompany an easy explanation as well. - Clean, Professional, Concise
Few points to remember. Fonts ideally 10pt Times New Roman or Arial. 1 inch margin all side. 1 page resume unless you have more than 10 years of experience. Be consistent with style ( number or bullet whatever you pick, be consistent to use it). Take extra-caution to avoid grammar and spelling errors. - Well Structured and Clear
Each time a recruiter takes a look at your resume, she is looking at few things right away. Your education (school, degree, major, and graduation year), your professional experience (companies, titles, and length of employment) and related technical skills ( for software engineering job-- programming languages you know, technology stack, platforms, and projects). You should make sure that your resume is well-structured into these category and is presented clearly.
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