I’m sure you must have spent sleepless nights and endless google searches looking for a perfect resume. Most of you would have asked your friends to send a sample resume.

Don’t worry, you aren’t the only one doing this and all these things are quite common in a job search.

What makes my resume stand out among other applicants? How to prepare my resume so that I get more calls from recruiters? Are my efforts in the right direction? These are some of the most frequent queries among all the job seekers.

80% of the job seekers download resume template from the internet. The problem with this approach is the fact that all these resumes look similar. Only “content” in the resume changes person to person.

In this article, I have complied some non-theoretical tips that will make your resume stand out. Don’t miss out on the bonus content at the end!

There are four main pillars of resumes – Lengths, Sections, Impact, and skills.

1. Length

Recruiters takes just 20 seconds to screen the resumes. No one wants to read 4 to 6 pages resumes or a long list of bullet points. A good resume should not cross 2 pages and career accomplishments (all companies put together) should be covered in 10-15 bullet points.

You can use other sections like summary, education, and skills as a paragraph or small table. Use SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact) model to write bullet points. It will catch the recruiter‘s/ hiring manager‘s eye.

Let take this example: instead of writing “Managed outdoor marketing campaign” write “Organized 14 network events in the last six months with 1200+ employees’ footfall”. This will also quantify your accomplishments.

2. Impact

Employers love to know how you have contributed to the organization's growth. All professionals will have an impact to create either in the team's growth or in the organization's success.

It may be as simple as increasing sales growth, simplifying the process, or developing the dashboard. Highlighting your impact is the most impressive thing to do in your resume. It doesn’t matter what role you are handling, numbers speak more than words. Use metrics that are relevant to your job.

Example: Automated budget vs Actual dashboard. This has saved 8 hours of manual efforts. Or Generated 78 lakhs revenue, a 24% increase from 2019.

3. Resume sections

A resume is an overview of your career. The sections of your resumes should be easily understandable and readable. Three important sections in the resume are Work experience, Skills, Education.

Start your resume with the latest work experience & add 3-4 bullet points in each section. Make a separate column for skills (I will discuss in detail in the next section).

For entry-level professionals, add university, marks, project details. Experienced professionals can skip marks and college projects. You can add some additional information like Activities, Training, and awards.

4. Skills

The most confusing part of a resume is adding skills, I’m sure most of you might get confused about what skills to add and what to ignore. I have made it simple for you. There are two types of skills: functional and soft skills.

Soft skills: should NOT be added or explicitly mentioned in the skills section.

Let’s take an example: Most people use “Team management”. This skill is dependent on the individual and changes from person to person. Instead of mentioning it as a skill, one should present some examples of team management. Example: “Leading 6 member team for operational excellence” or “managing deliverables of 4 members, including hiring, promoting and coaching”.

Functional skills: will be covered as part of the summary, achievement, or responsibilities. For technical skills, professionals can highlight it in separate sections. Example: Java, j2ee, selenium, etc.

Bonus

Things to strictly avoid in the resume - career objectives, PAN number, passport number, references, complete address, charts, graphs, logos, text in the header, and footers.

Checklist for a good resume: consistent fonts, neat formatting, less than 10-15 bullet points, not exceeding 2 pages, reverse-chronological employment history, easy to understand job title, Linkedin URL, GitHub or any relevant portfolio, save the file name as “firstname_lastname”.