Saturday, August 30, 2008

21 Secret Resume Preparation Tips to Get You a Guaranteed Job

A resume is a marketing tool for you. With the help of your resume you can make or break your job. The resume should emphasize on what you have done in the past and what is your potential or caliber to do in the near future. Avoid first or second person on a resume. The following 21 tips will help you in preparing your resume.



  1. Always make a point to know your potential employer. What does the organization does and what they are looking for in a post you are applying to.

  2. Start your resume and mention contact information. The contact information should be detailed one and don’t forget to include your email address and mobile number. If your employer is unable to contact you once then there is a possibility that you will not get a second chance. So keep your information updated.

  3. Then mention your career/job objective. This is applicable for entry level professionals. The experienced applicant usually don’t include this section.

  4. Mention your education in the details. Always include year of passing, institute name and marks scored. List all the details in reverse chronological order.

  5. If you have obtained any extra knowledge then mention that. In this section of resume you can also add details of any research work you have undertaken or any awards/recognition you have got.

  6. The content of a resume is of prime importance. It demonstrates your ability to do the job and supports and substantiates your objectives. Omit any racial, political or religious affiliation.

  7. If you have any previous experience or you have done any internship related to the job you are applying for then include that as well. The experience can condense any lack of education or not that good score.


  8. Describe your job positions held and type of work you did and what your accomplishments were. Also mention certain information about the organization of which you were the part of. Stress on accomplishments which strengthen your competency.

  9. Be sure to include leadership/management roles that you might have took during the course of your study. This becomes important because it can highlight your qualities for applied post.

  10. Apart from including the educational details try to include all the other activities you have done and preferably those which can highlight your skills required for particular job.

  11. Add some miscellaneous information as well such as hobbies, interests, goals, strengths etc

  12. Never exceed your resume more than 3 pages if you are professional and fresher’s should restrict the resume length to one page only.

  13. Once you have finished writing your resume re assess your resume many times and make sure that you haven’t left any important points in your resume.

  14. The appearance of resume is of great importance. Use white spaces to set off information and easy readability.

  15. Use proper fonts and bold the important things so that they easily catch an eye of an employer.


  16. Ensure that there are no grammatical or spelling errors. They look like small points but they are very crucial.

  17. The language that you use in a resume is also important. The language should be expressed in succinct manner.

  18. You should use action verbs and keywords throughout your resume.

  19. Layout of the resume should be clean and crisp.

  20. While taking a print out of your resume, use high quality paper. Resume paper should be of a heavier weight.

  21. Use of vertical and horizontal lines should be as minimal as possible. It can cause problem if you are sending your resume electronically.

Top Professional Resume Guide

Resume is the only tool which you have in your hand while you are applying for any post in an organization. Today you have only few seconds to impress an employer. You should not make any mistakes when you get such a chance. Your resume should speak everything about you in such a way that your employer is left with no option but to call you for an interview.

So while preparing a resume be very careful about certain basic requirements of your resume and presentation.
If you are professional then your resume should be able to convey all the things which you want to do or have done done till that. For professional a resume becomes of more importance.

The basic guiding is same as any resume but if you are a professional then you need to prepare a stand out resume for yourself.
The resume will look different for people of different background. You need to maintain that difference according to your education and profession.

If you are an established job seeker then you can include what type of work you are doing at the current position and how are you benefiting your organization. If possible you can mention the reason for switching from your current employer. If you are really talented and deserving then you can also say what you want from your potential employer.

While writing a professional resume keep the following points in mind.

  • If you are established professional then size of your resume can exceed 1-2 page. Try to include details such as current position held, job responsibility, accomplishments etc.

  • Know your employer and position for which you are applying for. Doing this you can easily tailor your resume such that it will suit the employer.

  • Clearly mention your skills. Try to include all the skills that will be required for your position. You must able to convince the employer that why you are best choice for the job.


  • Your resume should be sharp, concise and eye catchy. Remember even if you are established professional there will be thousand applying for the same job. The font, readability, style and formatting should be updated.

  • The content of resume is most important than the look of a resume. Include all the relevant information regarding your self. Then while mentioning your experience and past duties include the position held with brief description. Name of the company and if possible include some figures as well. You can mention the data of company’s progress while you were the in charge of a particular post in the previous organization.

  • If you have done something innovative then don’t forget to include that in your resume. These innovations can be: Increased productivity by any method you developed or saved money or reduced labor time or costs or Received promotions or awards for goals achieved. These can ensure you an interview call.

  • Lastly, take your own time to prepare a resume. You will be selected or rejected in the matter of seconds so don’t rush while you are writing your resume. You can also seek help of the resume writers or industry people in order to write a winning resume.

31 Never Failing Resume Tips

These days an employers gets around thousand resumes per day. So your resume must be capable of hooking an employer’s attention in a 5 second glance only. Employers select a resume within a matter of seconds so you must keep the following tips in mind while writing and mailing your resume to an employer.

  1. There do exists a “Perfect Resume” but majority of the applicant don’t have any idea about this. The same goes for employers as well. But keeping few things in mind you can prepare a near perfect resume.

  2. The length of a resume should be at least one page. If you are experienced then you can have a length of two pages. But more than two pages is generally not acceptable.

  3. If you are sending a resume to any employer personally then don’t follow to include cover letter as well. A cover letter should not exceed a page length. The cover letter is usually written in 3-4 paragraphs where in you mention purpose of correspondence, your skill and experience and a conclusion.

  4. If you are taking a help of resume writer for writing your resume, don’t hesitate in any question that you have in your mind.

  5. If you are preparing resume yourself then refer resume writing books, samples, writing tips to make a good resume.


  6. Tailor your resume according to the company and position for which you are applying. You should also have decent knowledge about the company and its market.

  7. Your resume should give off a professional and polished appearance.

  8. An employer will not reject your resume for tiny spelling or grammatical errors but you must avoid such mistakes as your resume should speak on your behalf.

  9. If you are an experienced professional then while mentioning the past work of yours, try to include only those which have more relevance to the position you are applying for.

  10. The resume should be easily readable. Use suitable font size, fonts, use of spaces etc.

  11. Avoid tiny fonts and block of texts.

  12. Do not list your current salary in resume or cover letter unless you have been instructed to do so.

  13. Experienced professionals should include work experience section before the education section.

  14. For each job position held- mention tenure, nature of job and accomplishments or goals achieved if any.


  15. Freshers should always include any extra course/part time job/internship related to job applying for. This can work in your favour.

  16. Bulleted points are not compulsion in a resume.

  17. These days “Interested” section is not required in a resume. They can be used to fill the empty space on a resume if any.

  18. The language used in resume should be as simple as possible with proper use of phrases and action verbs.

  19. While writing your resume keep a marketing mindset. You are trying to sell off yourself to an employer.

  20. A reader always read from left to right so always keep important heading on left side only.

  21. Always be honest in your resume. Lying can lead you to an uncalled trouble and you will not be considered as well.


  22. Accomplishments play a major role in a resume. Mention them briefly but don’t elongate your resume.

  23. Highlight your transferable skills.

  24. Whenever you are in fix whether to include particular details, question yourself whether it is relevant or not.

  25. If you are not currently employed, you resume needs to list the end date of your most recent position.

  26. As you have very little space to showcase yourself, try not to be repetitive.

  27. Always use 8-1/2-inch x 11-inch white or off-white high-quality paper when printing your resume so that it

  28. will be easy to read and scan.

  29. A Curriculum Vitae is different than resume. Don’t mix both of them together. A CV runs much longer than resume.


  30. You can follow any of the format you want to write a resume. But not every resume needs to follow a particular format.

  31. If you have done any community service then mention them at the bottom of your resume.

Learn How to Write an Effective Resume

Resume Writing is considered to be a daunting task by many but it is relatively very easier. The resume writing can be very smooth sailing for you if you have considerable knowledge about resume writing and purpose of writing a resume. The number one purpose of resume is to win you an interview call. If you get a call then it means your resume works else it is not an effective one. A resume can be said to be an advertisement where an applicant is selling himself as a product to the customer (Recruiter).

A resume focuses on all your plus points with perspective of the employer and makes an assertion that “This is best product available in the market”. A resume presents you in the best light and convinces a recruiter.

Once you are preparing a resume, please concentrate on the nature of job you are applying for and make a resume suitable for that vacancy. Research through internet and your contacts if the company is looking for any specific qualities. If so then make the use of that keyword throughout your resume. When you have defined a purpose of the resume the next things are generally same in all the type of resumes.

Include all the details of your previous experience, relevant skills, related accomplishments, specialized training etc.

The other tips for preparing a near perfect resume are:

  • Keep your resume short: 1-2 page, if possible.

  • Try to use bullets and numberings wherever possible and keep your resume neat and tidy.

  • Never try to bluff too much in your resume. A recruiter is vastly experienced to find any such goof ups. So be true in mentioning your skills and experience.

  • Try to be very concise. Always use verbs (action words, eg: developed, handled, organized, created, etc).

  • Your resume should be easy to read and at the same time it should be eye catching and not too much flashy.


  • If you are falling short of the ideas then the best option is to refer the internet. There you can find the latest resume samples, layout and structure. You can also refer to various books available in the market for the same. You can have many examples to refer for.

  • Once you have finished writing a resume, assess yourself first and then ask a critique to cross check your resume. If your resume is effective then you can mail it to the employers and sit back to get the best offer.

Depending on the position you are applying for, you might need to include cover letters. They are used to state how you came to know about the job vacancy, reasons you are interested in the job and why you fit for the said position.

How to select Best Resume Writing Service for You

In today’s competitive world, the company provides you only one chance and hence you must be ready to grab the opportunity that comes your way. Remember that first impression is the last impression. You must keep few points before making decision whether you want a Resume Service or not.

  1. The majority of recruiters/employers spend very less time (approx three minutes) reviewing a resume. This was concluded in a survey conducted by a major human resources association.

  2. Simple goof ups and grammatical errors can disqualify your resume from consideration.

  3. Lastly, you must understand that companies receive hundreds of thousands of resumes a year. Thus your resume must stand out in the thousands of similar resumes.


Thus you must choose the best available resume writing service available in the market. The probability of you getting a job increases if you get a call for interview. Thus your resume should be different from others. The bottom line is that you will get a job based on your skills and experience but the resume writing services help you present yourself in a much better way to catch the eye of an employer.

While selecting a resume writing service you must need to consider few points that are very important. The service that you select must also provide you cover letters, personal statement etc apart from writing a resume. You must visit their website and look for following things and then decide.
  1. They must have interactive worksheets where you can submit your resume information that you want to provide.

  2. They must be open to direct communication as well and should not always be electronic. Look for some telephone number.


  3. Go through the sample of resumes and cover letters to assess the quality of the service provider.

You must need to ensure that the service provider will hand over a resume that will be full of the substance and not just form. If you find that the sample resumes are cluttered and much confusing then avoid that service. With the emergence and penetration of the internet you can get the “best resume writing service in the nation”.

The one point you need to clear is that whether the service provider will prepare the resume with the consultation of some industry “expert” or some one less proficient. Also ensure that the service provider gives you enough time to contact the resume writer and you spend time with him to get best on your resume. Select a service that has minimum of 10 years of experience in handling the resume preparation. Lastly you need to feel comfortable with the service.
A quality resume writing services always follow a quality policy and provide the client to revise the resumes many times to ensure the customer satisfaction.

The one reason that people mostly give for not choosing a professional resume service is that they consider it to be expensive or not worth of money. One needs to shed this attitude because there are enormous advantages of the service. A resume writing service takes the help of professional resume writer who writes many resumes a day and knows the latest trends in the industry which you might not know and hence you may miss some of the important keywords that will help employers to select your resume for consideration. The chances of getting an error free and easy to read resume is very high and thus you need not to take any tension regarding your resume and you can focus on the other stages of the selection procedure. You can get a resume writing service at a reasonable price as well. If service is chosen carefully then you can move a step closer to your dream job.

Amazing Electronic Resume Guide

The emergence of technology also has its impact in procedure of job search as well. Ten years ago a job seeker tracked technologies, computerized systems for the purpose of searching or to store the resumes by specific keywords. But today almost all the companies are using the technologies to recruit new professionals. Though there is possibility that large number of company using independent, internet based database services to select the resume suiting their requirement.

The basic difference between traditional resume and electronic resume is that while former was used to attract human eye the later is used to attract attention of computer used for the database.

The basic concept behind electronic resume is that it will not be forwarded or read by a recruiter unless it has been scanned first by computer. The computer scans the resumes based on few keywords in the resume of the applicant. More and More organizations are using this method.

  • Any Electronic Resume can be

  • Read directly from computer.

  • Can be stored on the hard disk or other storing drives/disks.

  • Can be sent over the internet.

  • The search Engines optimized for resume selection/scanning can locate and use the resume.

  • Easy to be printed on paper.

There are certain tips and tricks to get your resume scanned successfully many a times. Mostly the electronic resumes are entered manually into the database of the company. Whenever the company wants the resume for any specific post, few keywords are entered and on basis of those keywords the best resumes are selected. Thus while submitting an E resume, one needs to be careful or spelling mistakes, use of proper keywords etc. The resumes selected are then entered into the database. The designing if database is totally dependent on an organization. The very common fields in any database you will find are:

  • Name

  • Location(City, State, Country)

  • Contact Address

  • Email ID

  • Phone Number

  • Source Code (how the candidate learned about the job)

As already mentioned the keywords are the heart of a resume. A search enine of computer will only look for the specified keywords and nothing else while scanning a resume. The keywords in a resume describe the applicant and important information regarding an applicant. They are:


  • Management Skills

  • Experience

  • Industry Knowledge

  • Technical Skills

  • Education and Training

Since Keywords are so important lets’ see few tips on that.
Before preparing an electronic resume, list down atleast 20-60 terms that will be able to describe about you, your personality, qualities, education and experience. The terms can be either technical or non technical. Consider if you have good knowledge of computer application then you can mention specific applications in which you are good, say Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXpress. If you have some business skills then you can mention them as well. Few other tips are:

  • Always list keywords as nouns and not verbs (e.g., use “facilitation,” not “facilitate”).

  • Use Simple Design

  • Abbreviations are strict No, because the acronym may be missed by the search engine.

  • Use very simple words

  • Length of resume should not be more than 3-4 pages. The “one page” resume have been replaced now.

Before writing an electronic resume it will be better if you can look for few sample resumes available on the internet to have an idea of how the e resume is written. Try to include all the keywords if you are making any statements in your resume. Also put all the keywords under logical headings. Remember, to be more creative in writing about yourself but without any fancy things and concentrate on only important points such as experience and technical skills that are important in perspective of the recruiter.

Create a Winning Resume

A resume is first step towards getting an interview call. Your employment success can be made or break because of a resume. Always think resume as a marketing tool, where you are the product and your employer is a customer. Your resume is brochure containing description of a product i.e. you. You need to market yourself with the help of your resume.

Hundreds of people apply for any vacancy in a company but only few get a call for an interview. Thus it is very essential that your resume stands out from the others. If you want that your resume shines then prepare a good resume along with a cover letter if required.

The few of the points mentioned below will help you in creating a winning resume.

  • The formatting and feel of a resume is very important. Your resume can impress or depress an employer at first glance. A resume formatted well with a readable font size, easy to locate and skim information, proper spacing will attract the reader’s eyes. Many a times people don’t bother about the quality of paper while taking print of a resume. But it is very essential that it is printed on high quality paper.

  • Put a great emphasis on spelling, grammar, words and typing mistakes. You must have heard about this many a time but mind you it is that important as well. Very rarely you will find an error free resume. You just cannot make a reader to pause and think of what you are trying to say. Remember every single mistake in your resume shows your carefulness and attention.

  • Provide your correct and up to date contact information on your resume. In this era there should be no problem for an employer in locating or calling you. Remember if you miss even a single call from your employer that might be the end of the road for you.

  • While writing a resume you must be aware of what an employer is looking for and what you have to offer. Once decided then you can either opt for chronological or functional resume.

  • A chronological resume contains past experience and emphasises on experience only. Order your experience starting from latest.


  • In a functional resume you have little or no experience but you focus on the skills that are required for a particular job and you have talent for the same.

  • Mention objective at the start of your resume. The objective acts as a connector between your skills, experience, qualities etc with those which is being looked by an employer.

  • You must include a section in your resume which focuses on your career highlights/qualifications/accomplishments. This section is usually written in bulleted format emphasizing mainly on your experience, personality and skills. You must highlight what was your role and results in the previous job. Focusing on accomplishments can provide you with the golden chance of being interviewed. With this section you can create a very good assessment about yourself in the employer’s eyes. Basically this helps you to tell your potential employer of how you performed or out performed the others. You must try to include some important keywords that must have been listed in any advertisement about that particular job. You should try to include certain keywords throughout your resume.

  • while mentioning your experience try to include the name of the company and the post you held there. You can also give brief introduction if the company is not that renowned. This helps your potential employer assess your experience. Also give in brief what you did for that company exactly. Many a times designation and the words can be misleading. So don’t let your employer do any guess work.

  • In one section include your co-curricular and extra curricular details. If you have been outstanding in some sports, held any post of responsibility while in college and any awards that you might have got. This can make your resume a little more catchy.

  • Once you have finished writing your resume read and re-read it. Try to review your resume many times and correct errors, if any. An error free increases your probability of getting an interview call. You can also take help of your friends/relatives while assessing the resume.

The requirement of a resume may vary from one employer to another but the basic structure remains the same. Hence you can use the tips provided to create a winning resume.