It’s that time of the year again when final year students face the nail-biting, tense and largely overhyped campus placements. We’ve seen students getting obsessed with nailing their “dream” jobs and going to any lengths to achieve it. Stupidsid provides you the tips and tricks to build that perfect resume which will make your lifetime’s efforts so worthy that no company will ever think twice before hiring you. So just relax, read through our compilation of DO’s and DON’T’s and start planning your job treat for your friends.

Before we impart more wisdom to you, let’s get one thing very clear that you should be very sure of yourself and your resume. These are your achievements and feeling bad about the lack of it is NOT going to help you in anyway. So be sure of what you have, be confident because EVERY RESUME IS UNIQUE. The resume you put up is your ultimate marketing tool and your confidence should reflect in it. Needless to say highlighting strengths and editing out the flaws in you is the key to success.

Mentioned below are the primary points which will drive you towards a Winning Resume:

1. First Impression

First Impression is the Last and the Best Impression. The top of the resume should have such powerful information that would make the recruiter read further. An average recruiter receives hundreds of [entry/mid-level] resumes daily and each resume may at best get not more than a minute. WRITING A STRONG SPECIFIC CAREER OBJECTIVE will be the best eyeball grabber. A generic one would be like shooting yourself in the foot. Rather not have one if you intend to make it generic.

2. GENERAL FLOW

The resume should be in the following order:

• Name
• Contact Information, DoB (writing 'DoB' is an accepted norm)
• Objective
• Education
• Projects (with details)
• Achievements
• Workshops/Training attended or delivered
• Publications/paper presentations
• Family Information
• Initiatives taken in career (NGO work, fund-raising, organizing work, founding anything all come here separately to stand out)

Try not to elaborate too much. A recruiter needs essentials and not personal history.

3. THE OBJECTIVE

The objective should be connected to "you", your goals etc. A generic objective will not serve the purpose. Better not to have one rather!

4. Segmentation

To make your CV visually pleasing use bands to distinguish between sections like academics, extra-curricular activities, projects etc. (As an example you can refer to the format of Stupidsid’s MS-in-US profile). A visually pleasing CV will work wonders in the direction of getting shortlisted.

5. highlighting achievements

Details regarding Projects, Workshops and Internships should be mentioned in subsequent pages. In the main resume itself, a brief one-line description highlighting major work is sufficient. In the subsequent description, mentioning learning curve and key takeaways is paramount. If you have no work experience stressing on projects, workshops and internships will be important.

6. adapt to new practices

• Modern CVs mention education in this style or any nearly matching style:
  
  Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics & Telecommunication, Mumbai University, 2012, 74%
  
  Note: Avoid using abbreviations like EXTC. Standard style of writing mandates that use full form the first time with abbreviation in brackets. In subsequent sentences, abbreviations are ok. Also avoid mentioning percentages of every small test that you have topped in.
   
• Avoid writing CV/RESUME on the top and a signature at the bottom. This is just too British Raaj era.

7. impact by being compact

Be smart and terse while mentioning the various aspects on your CV.

• Modern CVs use a different way of reporting. Take for example the following case:
  "Presented a paper in National Level Technical Symposium (ASTHRAA’12) on “HHO Mileage Maker” held at Karpagam University, Coimbatore in 2012."
  
  This can be written in a compact style:
  HHO Mileage Maker, Asthraa-12, Karpagam University, Coimbatore, 2012
   
• "Other Activities" can be rephrased as "Extra Curricular Assignments"
• "Successfully" completed RAJYA PURASKAR in scouts & guides. "Completed" itself means you were "successful". So using "successfully completed" is not needed
• "Educational profile" can be written as 'education' or 'academics'

8. CONSISTeNcy:

Example:

• "Plus Two: Under Karnataka"
• "SSLC from Karnataka"

Why use "under" for Plus Two and "from" for SSLC? Also why not PUC? Be consistent. If you use Class X for SSLC then use class XII for PUC.

9. extra curricular

Soft skills like fast learner, team player, hard-worker and the types should avoided as far as possible. The recruiters will judge all these themselves. You cannot qualify yourself. Moreover, your resume should be crafted to highlight things like if you have achievements in football; so stress on that to show your team player skill.

Hobbies which are relevant to the job profile should be mentioned. Like if you are applying for a finance/marketing related job mentioning quizzing and debating will be helpful. Technical interests can take a pass in this case.

10. RESUME V/s Profile

It is a good practice to maintain a separate resume and a 'profile'. There are striking differences between the two. It is not really job-driven and come in handy for people working on parallel careers like freelancing.

11. MiSCELLANEOUS

• Avoid using the word PARTICIPATED too often. The word is very stagnant and does not give a good impression because ultimately there would have been so many others as well.
• Referring to the social networking website - LinkedIn - would be helpful in gaining insights. Make sure you read profiles relevant to your fields which have fleshed out everything properly. That would be a good head start before drafting the resume.
• Any page should be at least 75% filled. If not try fitting in previous page itself.

12. PROOF-READ

Re-check once you have finished drafting your resume. Proof-read it for grammatical and factual mistakes. The last thing you want is having wrong achievements mentioned. It wouldn’t be the best conversation starter in an interview.
 

Lastly, as we have mentioned before, be sure of yourself and exude the right amount of confidence in your resume. You are not Bill Gates or Warren Buffett; understand this as early as possible because those recruiting you will surely know this. Stupidsid would like to wish you best of luck for all your upcoming endeavours.

Good luck and God Speed.

  Compiled from various Resumes Evaluated by resume expert Siddarth Baliga. You can get yours evaluted too. Also, check various Job Profiles to gain insight in to what exact work you'll be doing in your company.