Recuiters and Employers are inundated with resumes - make yours stand out
When starting off with a resume, the thing to keep in mind is that resumes are read from top to bottom. And when recruiters are looking through a stack of resumes, they always scan the top of the page when looking for someone.
So although it is a good idea to play around with your resume a little bit, to make it stand out of the Microsoft template bunch, always, ALWAYS start with your name and contact information: address, e-mail, phone number. Although some people claim that in this day and age when everything is online and e-mail is most commonly used to contact people, that addresses have become obsolete on the resume. We say that if you are not short on space, just keep it there. No harm in that, but some recruiters might be put off by not seeing your address on your resume.
The most important ‘real estate’ of the resume is at the top of the resume. The first quarter of the resume is what most reviewers will read and it is the best place for you to make an impression. Don’t blow it! Here are a few tips for you to consider:
- Put your name at the top of the resume along with your contact information so the reviewer can easily get in touch with you. If your resume is emailed, the file name should be your full name separated with underscores. (EX. John P. Smith should be john_p_smith)
- Have your specialization statement near the top of your resume and then use the remaining space of your resume to substantiate your claims.
- If you have some summary bullets of the information in your job history to support that claim, like the number of years of experience or a claim of projects completed or money earned, then include those in quick hitting bullets under the specialization statement.
Everything else should come next. This kind of a resume is called a combination resume, because you list your skills and achievements that are applicable to the position you are applying for, first. Like in a functional resume. And then you add your work history, education and so on, like in a chronological resume. So in a combination resume, you get the benefits of both: you can point out your strong sides to the recruiter first and they can check and make sure you don’t have any gaps in your resume or anything else that might raise any flags later.
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