Your resume is the strongest weapon in your arsenal when you start your search for a job. It can help you find your high-paying dream job, or you can stuck with one you definitely didn’t want. Unfortunately being honest and listing your accomplishments and skills are not enough to create the perfect CV for your job search anymore.

While writing your resume, you should be keeping in mind that HR managers are going to read and examine it, so you have to make sure that they can understand what you want to communicate. It is also always a good idea to consult a hiring manager for what they are looking for in a CV.

When you finally create the perfect CV you will immediately notice the difference and recruiters and hiring managers are going to start inviting you to job interviews suddenly. That’s how impactful a good resume is.

Start With A Good Design

The design of your resume says a lot about you, so you cannot open a Word document and list your accomplishments and experiences without thinking about design. Usually, the best way to choose a design is to get one of those ready-to-use templates. 

Basic text editors can ruin the design of these templates when you make one small change. So try to find a design program to create your resume.

If you don’t know anything about graphic design, you can opt for programs easier to operate, like Canva. The free versions of this platform offer endless choices for templates and design. And you can easily customize your resume with their help.

***

Let’s go back to the design aspect. Not everyone’s design is suitable for everyone. The industry you are seeking a job in and your experience can require different designs. For example, if you want a job in a creative field like marketing you might want a more colorful and again, creative design. After all, the job of a marketing executive is to sell a product and if you cannot sell your services with your resume, it means you are not a good marketer.

So take some time to think about the design. Make it pop and attention-capturing but don’t stray from professionalism. Creativity doesn’t always mean a lack of seriousness. In fact, your resume will be a perfect example of how you balance both of them together.

There are several famous examples of creative resumes you can see on the internet. While they certainly capture the attention and astonish people it is best to stay away from gimmicks and grand declarations on your CV. Especially if you don’t have the exceptional skills to back them up.

How to Fill Out the Resume Template

It is always a good idea to keep your resume only one page. You might have a lot of experience and skills but HR managers receive so many resumes per job ad and hardly have time to carefully examine every resume, especially if they have more than one page. 

Try to keep your experiences and your skills that are relevant to the job you apply to. No need to add that pizza place you worked at if you are now an executive. If you apply for different types of jobs try to create more than one resume, each designated for different types of jobs. This can keep your resumes shorter.

Depending on your experience and where you stand you can change the location of the sections on your resume. Don’t have enough experience but graduated from a well-known and fancy university? Put that on top where it can be seen easily. Have a unique and rare skill that can help you shine? Make sure it pops on your resume. Play to your strengths.

Be Aware of the Rules

Are you applying for jobs locally or globally? Believe us, you need different resumes for different countries. In some countries, you are definitely not supposed to add a photo of yourself on your resume. Some countries forbid employees to ask questions like marital status or whether you have kids. 

So make sure you have done your homework and research, learn about the rules in detail and prepare different resumes if you need to. While you are not expected to know about a foreign country’s rules and traditions, to be aware of them will make you look more professional and motivated.

The Content of Your Resume

While the contents of the resume can change depending on the industry you work in and your experience there are some sections a resume absolutely must have. Here we are going to examine each section and what kind of information your resume should hold.

Contact Information

You need to be giving several different contact information to hiring managers so that they can reach out to you. Your email address is the most important one, make sure you have typed it correctly, otherwise, you would miss many opportunities.

Your full name, your telephone number are equally important. If you are applying for jobs in different countries you can also include the pronunciation of your name, since hiring managers can sometimes have difficulty. And your phone number should have the area code of your country.

You don’t need to disclose your address but do put in your country of residence and the city you live in. If you want to work abroad, it is always a good idea to mention that you are willing to relocate. Don’t forget to add if you have any work permits in other countries.

Other types of information may include your professional title and your social media accounts if related. For example, if you are a writer you can share your blog, or if you are a graphic designer you can add the link to your portfolio. If you have a professional website, add that too!

Resume Summary

Every resume should have a summary of your experiences and skills, and simply what you do and what you can offer in a few well-constructed sentences. Try to use a few keywords the hiring manager will be looking for and add the highlights of your career and skills.

The resume summary should highlight your selling points. What are your unique skills? What can you offer to your potential employers? Here you can add your experience with numbers. How much revenue you have generated for the last company you worked at, or since when you have been doing this job are all important points the hiring managers will be on the lookout for.

Take some time to write your resume summary. Our suggestion is to take a few days at least and to write several different versions of it. Compare them to each other and request feedback from your friends and co-workers to find the best one. And again, you might need different summaries for different job applications.

Work Experience

Honesty is the key when mentioning your work experience. Give as many details as possible, such as your start date, your finish date, your position and tasks and most importantly your accomplishments.

Instead of summarizing your day-to-day tasks try to include as many successful results as possible. This part should be about what you have managed to do, not what you can do. If your tasks are too many eliminate the unimportant ones and only keep the relevant ones.

And never forget, everything you say should be provable, the employers can ask you to demonstrate what you have claimed on your resume, especially the ones on the experience section.