Tuesday, September 7, 2010

writing an effective resume

The CV is the first impression that the potential employers have on you. Even before your first meeting, the resume will be doing the job to sell you, and depending on the quality of your resume, it can impose a positive or negative image about you. For that reason, writing an effective resume, is very important.

The CV is like a mini-biography about yourself. A well written and structured CV will have a compelling stories about you and the potential employers can easily pickup the key information on your skills and experiences. A good CV would generate a stronger interest to know you further and get you to the the next stage, i. e the interview.

However, unstructured and poorly written CV will create an impression on your ability and skills. Given the choices that the potential have on the picking from a list of applicants, very likely you will not even called to the interview.

Here are some important tips in writing a good resume:

a. Write Concisely:
A well written CV should be easily read and contains all the relevant information about you. The two common mistakes about the CV are either it is too brief or too lengthy. It is too brief when a lot of relevant information are missing and the reading will not be able to conclude their impression of you. It is too lengthy when the readers fing it difficult to locate the facts and thi will make them loss interest in you. A good CV will be about 4 or 5 pages.

b. Talk about yourself
The first section should contain the information about you, full name, address, phone number and e-mail. It also contain your education, professional qualification, technology and language skills.
A small section will be on your career related information on your key strength, jobs related skills, career achievements and aspiration. The employers will use this to judge your suitability for the career.

c. Share your work experiences:
The next section is about your experiences. Write about your experiences in the reverse chronological order, that mean the latest experience on top. Summarize the scope of your responsibilities neatly using bullet point. Be precise, for example, if you say you can turn around a company, give the data and figures to demonstrate the achievement.
Provide also the quantitative achievements, such as job promotions, awards and recognition.

d. Manage your CV
- employers will hire candidate with potential and proven track records in the similar roles and position. There are also looking at the soft aspect such as the cultural suitability and ability to work with the existing groups.
- They are wary about job hoppers, if your are able to leave the previous jobs, you can do the same in future's job.
- The employers will also be critical if you had been doing similar job for a long time. This can give the impression that you are stagnant and not a candidate for a dynamics organization.
- Take care of the gaps in your career. You do not have to hide it. If you stop working for a couple of years to raise a child, put it in.

Conclusion
Be truthful about yourself. The worst is to insert a false information. It can easily be verified with the reference check. It can cause you the job and the worst is, it can tarnish your name in the job market and that can affect your jobs with other organisations.


No comments:

Post a Comment