Writing Your Resume

Writing your resume is an essential aspect of applying for a job, as it requires a lot of effort and planning on your behalf. A badly worded and poorly presented resume can put off a potential employer totally!

We intend to provide some broad guidelines to help you write a resume that could work for you. Work for you to achieve what it is meant to i.e. to get you an interview call for a job.

At the outset, it is necessary to clarify that you could use the term "resume" or "curriculum vitae" (CV), even though technically a CV is primarily meant for job positions within the academic environment and is supposed to be a lengthy document. The difference is not strictly followed and it is safe to use these two terms interchangeably, but remember that whatever word you use, be sure that you know how to pronounce it accurately!

Start off by identifying your job objective

The job objective is an excellent area to include in your resume and is usually omitted. It puts your resume in the right perspective for the reader and clearly shows where you are headed in your career plans. If you are applying for an entry level position in marketing, your job objective could be something like:

Objective: Interested in an entry level position in marketing in a multi-national corporation.

The 'multi-national corporation' phrase makes your objective generic regarding company choice. It would be advisable to modify each resume to suit specific companies that you apply to. Then the job objective would read like this:

Objective: Interested in an entry level position in marketing.

Provide a summary of your experience and skills 

The next section that your resume should contain is a 5-6 point summary of your skills and experience. That includes:

          * No. of years of past and relevant work experience
          * a brief description of the work done
          * specific skills acquired
          * significant achievements 
          * educational qualifications.

This section is very useful, in providing a snapshot view of what your resume contains for situations where yours is one resume in a pile of fifty others. It allows minimal information loss in case the resume is quickly skimmed over and not given a detailed reading. In this section, the skills that you present should help in answering the question -"How can you contribute to the organization?"

Some Other Important points to be kept in mind before writing resumes.

• Prioritise details of your past work experience.
• Include other information only if significant.
• Present educational qualifications with the most recent one first.
• References should be provided on request.