This is the fourth and final part of the article series deals with preparing a professional resume.
In the earlier tutorials, we studied the Job Description and how it helps resume development. We also discussed keywords and sections that you should include in the resume. In this article, we will try to combine the above to develop effective bullets.
I recommend the following steps below for developing a good resume:
Step 1: Write everything that you have got on the paper
Step 2: Segregate – w.r.t. Functions and w.r.t. Qualities
Step 3: Check Relevance w.r.t. JD
Step 4: Structure the Resume
Step 1: Write everything that you’ve got on the paper
Yes, I want you to write everything. Notably, you can include –
- Achievements – related to work or other activities that you are proud of.
- Responsibilities that you have handled.
- College events that you organized or helped organize. This one is relevant t0 the freshers who don’t have other experiences to showcase.
- Competitions/ quizzes that you have won.
- Trainings you took and projects that you completed.
Use another paper if needed. Ensure that you get everything out of your mind. Now, we are ready for analysis.
Step 2: Segregate – With respect to functional and qualitative skill sets
Now, segment the list of responsibilities and achievements. You can classify them by the functions and qualities they best represent.
For example, consider the following bullet:
“Organized Management Event, ‘Innovative Innovations‘ , which rewarded innovative business ideas”
Functions represented – General Management
Quality/Skills represented – Planning, Coordination
“Marketed the event through promotions in technical and management institutes”
Functions represented – Marketing, Sales
Quality/Skills represented – Cross-functional learning
You can analyze each of your bullet points and arrange them in a tabular format if you want.
Step 3: Check Relevance w.r.t. JD
This is primarily applicable to experienced candidates, but it also applies to some entry-level jobs. In fact, if you think of your suitability with job roles, it can benefit you greatly in long run.
We will be using the sample Job Description from the second article. You can open it here in another window to refer. For those who don’t want to check out, the JD is related to Operations role.
We might have to tweak some points or even strike off certain irrelevant ones.
“Organized Management Event, ‘Innovative Innovations‘ , which rewarded innovative business ideas”
Functions represented – General Management
Quality/Skills represented – Planning, Coordination
Relevance to JD – High. Functional match with General Management and Skillset match with Planning and Coordination
“Marketed the event through promotions in technical and management institutes”
Functions represented – Marketing, Sales
Quality/Skills represented – Cross-functional learning
Relevance to JD – Low. Skillset match-mismatch.
Do it for all your resume bullets keeping target JD in front.
Having sorted out the most relevant points, let us place them on the sheet in order of decreasing relevance.
That is how they should come on your resume. But make sure not to mix professional and personal points together while ordering.
With all the relevant points with us, we will try to structure it in the next section. For now, let’s strike out the low rated irrelevant points.
You can keep some points depending on some additional criteria. It is really a process of iteration!
Step 4: Structuring the Resume ( Chronological or Functional or Mixed format)
Here comes the tricky part! Now that we have the relevant parts of experience, the challenge is to arrange them in the best possible way.
The question is – do you want to make a Functional Resume or a Chronological (or reverse-chronological) resume?
This is a very subjective matter, but the following thumb rules should work.
- If you are a fresher, you might not be having many experience bullets, except if you did part-time jobs. It also means that your functional expertise of any kind will be limited. I will recommend you to start with a summary, followed by qualifications profile, collegiate experiences, and then include projects, internships, volunteering, or part-time jobs.
- If you have an experience of 2-3 years, try to bring out the functional expertise in your experience, if possible. You can do so by grouping similar bullets.
- If you have over 5 years of experience, you can display qualities such as leadership, teamwork and some functional expertise like project management, sales, HR, and so on. Your resume can be a mix of qualities and functional expertise.
- However, do not mess up with the reverse chronology too much. The recruiter wants to know what you are now and not what you were 10 years back.
Now, you have all the good things in your resume to rank higher on ATS systems and manual sorting.
You can improve the resume further by working on resume formats, about which we will learn in a separate article.
Feel free to post your queries in the comment section.
