After the paraphernalia of arranging various documents and writing the application form, the next important step is to submit a resume. Some companies and recruitment agencies ask the candidates to send in their resumes, before the process of selection is furthered. Give and take, the resume is a kind of first representation of the candidate for a job. Since landing up a particular job from a number of options is important for long term career goals, people should also take care to make the first step impressive. To win over a particular job, people need to take into considerations a few important points that will work in their favour. Some important features that are necessary in the current job scenario are;
- The very first thing that people putting in their resumes need to think about is making their applications impress the recruiters in 15 seconds. Since the usual time that recruiters take to screen out applications is 15-20 seconds, it is important to know what to include in the curriculum vitae. Clean and visually appealing appearance is necessary to invite the eyes to read. A summary of the qualifications that are relevant to the position applied for is a must and this should be presented as the header. Keywords and phrases should be appropriately placed throughout the document. There should a clear cut section that highlights the work accomplishments relevant to the jobs should be there.
- The qualifications that are helpful for the job applied should be put down in the resume document. There should be a proper chronological listing of the qualifications. In case someone is having some trainings that can help the recruiter in knowing about the extra skills should also be mentioned. Anything that is not relevant should be missed out because these will unnecessarily elongate the document. Previous experiences and work profiles can be put if they are closer to the target jobs.
- Length of the resume is also considered important nowadays because people are not having patience to scout through everything that has been written on the document. If the initial page is impressive, then there are chances that recruiters will turn on to the next page. It is prudent to therefore, keep the resume to one page. For applying to midlevel positions, one can go for more than one page resumes because a number of work experiences are required to be mentioned. There is never a need to jumble up all the things in one page in order to make the resume concise. It is rather wiser to leave white spaces and turn on to next page.
- It might not be the first things to be done, but checking out for mistakes and typographical errors is one of the most important things that should be done. Any spelling mistakes or incorrect or insensible sentences can go a long way in rejecting the resume outright.
Most of the companies nowadays are going for online resumes instead of the one which is being sent through postal services. By this, a large number of such applications are received in a very short while. With software usage that can scan through the pages quickly, many recruiting agencies and companies are able to scout the resumes for mistakes. It is here that half of the job seekers are selected and much of it depends on the way these documents are presented. It is usually less than a minute that the recruiters take to finalise their candidates to be called for the interview and if people want to be in this list, then the job winning resume is a must where the salient points as above should be taken care of.