Post Your Resume Online - Top 10 Tips for Posting a Resume

Friday, December 31, 2010

A resume is your first step towards a job. Now it is very essential that it has the right impact on the interviewer. Your being called for a job interview and finally being hired in the job all depends upon the resume. Here are the top 10 tips for posting a resume.

1) Customize your resume for every particular job application. Different jobs have different requirements hence it is very essential that you make your resume in accordance to the job at hand.

2) A candidate usually does not have more than half a minute to attract the recruiter towards him. A written profile does it far better than anything else. Once you are done with composing your resume let a third person read it and judge if the description matches that of yours.

3) Just in case you are looking for a completely new career than the one you were into make sure that you mention vital points like things you are good at, what you love doing and what is your special trait something which an individual will pay you for.

4) Elaborate all your past achievements in previous jobs. Be it exceeding targets or winning awards, project completions or attracting new clients your resume should have all your past accomplishments.

5) Do not go for gimmicks like fancy photos, designed papers, etc. It sometimes gets your application almost instantaneously rejected.

6) Make sure you print the resume on A4 papers. One should always use high quality paper if the resumes are to be hand delivered rather than being emailed. A plain official font like Times Roman or Ariel should be preferred over fancier ones. Use a font size of 10 or 11. For online submissions it’s good to submit a rtf or pdf extension files to avoid compatibility issues.

7) Do not make the resume too long. A maximum of three pages should be your target. Give only information which is relevant for your recruiters’ purpose and not everything that you have ever done. Remember too long is often too boring. Besides your recruiter will not have so much of time to dedicate to a single resume.

8) Use keywords which are unique to the industry you are applying to. This creates a bigger impact on the recruiters. Also where the sorting of resumes is done via software’s, these keywords give a better choice to the resume which has it.

9) Double check your resume for any spelling or grammatical mistakes. Also see to it that none of the sentences are excessively long. Short and crisp sentences are what catch the eye.

10) Cover letters are very essential as the recruiter sees it first and then reads the resume. It is advisable to mention some of your success stories in bullet points on the cover letter to draw attention. Cover letters should be generally addressed to a particular individual and you should sign it off with a ‘yours sincerely’. Just in case there is an unnamed recruiter sign off by ‘yours faithfully.’