Your resume is the most important tool when being considered for a job, as it’s your one way ticket to meeting your potential employer. Follow these tips on how to best represent yourself on paper, to increase your chances of an interview.
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Our Top 10 Resume Tips
1. What to include
- Your current contact details
- Skills, achievements and attributes (both professional and personal)
- Education, tickets and training (provide copies)
- Employment history including: Company name ~ Job Title ~ Dates of Employment (e.g. Mar 02 – Feb 05) ~ Responsibilities and achievements (e.g. Employee of the month or ‘increased sales by 50%’)
- Contact details of your current references who are easily contactable
2. Keep it relevant and current
Ensure you tailor your resume to specifically suit the job you are applying for. Equally important is to only list employment history for the past 15 years. Anything over that may no longer be relevant and your skills lost. (You can go further back if your length of service with one company was for many years).
3. Keep it simple
Your resume should only be 2 -3 pages long. In addition, to ensure a professional look, keep the font type the same all the way through and use bullet points for a clean, easy to read resume
4. Read the employer’s submission requirements
Whether it’s sending through your resume in the correct format (e.g. pdf, doc etc), a request to accompany your resume with a cover letter, or whether to apply through the website or via email – demonstrate that you can read instructions and most importantly, follow them
5. Photographs on resume
It is not necessary to put your photo on your resume. Not only does it take up valuable space, but it can also be used as a basis for discrimination whether conscious or unconscious. Prejudices cause people to make assumptions based on race, age, disability and gender to name a few.
6. Attention to detail
Nothing looks more unprofessional than a resume with spelling mistakes, misused punctuation and poor grammar. Take the time to read through your resume to ensure there are no errors. This is an important reflection of your written communication skills and attention to detail.
7. Prove it
You may have a long list of skills which is great, but to make more of an impact and get the employer’s attention, demonstrate how you use these skills within your workplace very briefly. You can expand when you get the interview!
8. What to avoid
As with no. 5, although it is illegal, discrimination still exists with some employers. Avoid information such as political affiliation, date of birth, religion, nationality, age, marital status, kids, sex etc.
9. Get the date right
Your length of service with every employer on your resume should include months, not just the year. If you just put ‘2000 – 2001’, this could mean Jan 2000 to Jan 2001 which is one year, or Jan 2000 – Dec 2001 which is two years. If it isn’t clear, unnecessary and incorrect assumptions can be made.
10. Be honest
Lying or “stretching” the truth of what your skills, experience and abilities are, will either come out when questioned in an interview, through the reference checking process, or once on the job. If you can talk the talk, make sure you can walk the walk.
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