Key Takeaway
- By definition, a resume is a summary of your professional, educational, and sometimes even personal experiences that showcase your abilities to a potential employer.
- To write a strong resume, make sure to include your contact information, customize it for the specific job, quantify your achievements, simplify jargon, highlight any educational awards, include relevant skills, and double-check for spelling and grammar errors.
- When designing your resume, pay attention to formatting by making sure your layout has clearly defined sections, you are using bullet points, your font size and style are readable, and that color is used sparsely.
- Use an online resource like Canva, Resume Genius, or UpToWork to find a template that is professional yet visually appealing.
Flickr user Brandi Redd
Let’s face it: How to write and design a good resume is a glaring question for anyone looking for a job. After all, it’s your first impression—and it has to be made via a piece of paper in your absence.
Your resume is usually the first document your potential employer is going to look at before deciding whether or not to call you in for an interview. It’s one of the major components of a job application and therefore has to be crafted perfectly.
To help you out, we have crafted a 13-step guide to help you create a well-designed resume with optimized content to help you stand out among your peers.
So, What Is a Resume?
A resume is a highlight of your professional skills, experience, and achievements—think of it as a quick introduction of yourself to potential employers. Remember that most hiring managers have seen their fair share of resumes, so you want yours to stand out!
While there are a lot of ways you can use your creativity, there are a few universal red flags to avoid, such as lying, inappropriate language, and using a format impossible to follow. Before we get to the how-to steps, here is an infographic to give you a snapshot of what an ideal resume looks like:
14 Steps to Writing a Good Resume
1. Create a Clear and Organized Structure
It’s vital to use a clean format with clear subsections outlining your work experience, education, and skills with proper bullet points. This makes your resume easily scannable for employers and helps them quickly gather the gist of your profile. The rule of thumb is that an ideal resume should not be longer than one page. This may sound too short, but as long as it is effective, it can still leave a strong impression on the recruiter.
2. Use Readable Fonts
As tempting as new fonts can be, it’s best to stick to standard fonts when you write your resume. Standard fonts would include Calibri, Garamond, Trebuchet MS, Georgia, and Helvetica. These fonts have proven time and again to have worked best among all the fonts out there because of their professional look and readability. Keep your font size between 10-12.
3. Include Contact Details
Always make it easy for employers to contact you. Include your full name, email, phone number, and address. Your LinkedIn profile can always be an addition. Pro Tip: Use headers and footers to showcase contact info so you don’t waste space.
4. Nail Your Personal Statement
Your personal statement, or profile, is generally a two to three sentence summary that tells someone who you are and what your values are. It’s typically one of the first things anyone looking at your resume will read, so coming up with a strong personal right of the bat is key. To write a good personal statement is key to hooking the resume reviewer.
5. Customize for the Job
A common resume for all job applications is a good base to start with. Then, to help yourself standout, you’ll want to customize the content for each job you are applying to. Mentioning recent and relevant experience will increase your chances of getting the job. For example, if you’re applying for an HR job, it would be helpful to mention your skills in working with people and managing relationships. Conversely, if you’re applying for a job at a software development company, there isn’t much of a need to write about your high school athletic achievements.
6. Optimize Bullet Points
Keep your bullet points concise with no longer than two lines per bullet. Be sure to bold important keywords so that it is easy for the recruiters to scan. They should be the same size and shape in each section and aligned from page to page.
7. Remember That Quantification Is Key
Quantifying your value to a company will help effectively portray your capabilities. To do this effectively, use the “So what?” technique. Start by writing down an accomplishment or experience. Then, ask yourself “So what does this mean to the employer?” or “Why is this important?” Use this technique to refine your statement until it is impactful.
Original Statement: “I led a team project.”
Ask So What?: “So what? Why does that matter?”
Refined Statement: “I led a team project that improved efficiency by 20%, demonstrating my leadership skills and ability to drive results.”
8. Use Action Key Words
Aim to use words that will add more value to your resume. For instance, using action words like “managed, spearheaded, and created,” at the start of each bullet point as opposed to “was, did, and made,” can describe your work more accurately.
In addition, many companies now use applicant tracking systems to churn out resumes as needed. These tracking systems specifically look for resumes that use action words and discard ones that don’t. If you want your resume to get into the hands of an employer, then you’ll need to ensure you write relevant words into your resume.
9. Simplify Jargon
HR might not belong to your field of work and thus may fail to understand your work experiences if you only use dense field-related jargon. Even if you’re the best candidate, unclear language can hurt your chances. For example, instead of saying, “I executed a comprehensive strategic overhaul of the workflow processes,” you could say, “I improved how our team works together, making us faster and more efficient.”
10. Highlight Educational Achievements
Regardless of when you graduate(d) from college, mentioning your degree (or what degree you’re currently working on) adds value to your profile. Referring to educational achievements—like the fact that you were valedictorian or graduated with honors—adds even more weight to your resume. You may even highlight any educational awards you received.
11. Match and Include Relevant Skills
You don’t need to add all the skill sets you have developed over the years, but you do need to include the ones that are relevant to the job. The company you’re hoping to interview with is looking for a specific skill set in their prospective employee, so read the job description carefully and list the skills you have that match up with what they are looking for.
While common skills may include leadership, communication, and time management, here is a short list of unique skills you may include to help your resume stand out:
- Adaptability
- Emotional Intelligence
- Data Analysis
- Project Management
- Creative Problem Solving
- Digital Literacy
12. Double-Check Spelling and Grammar
Sloppy grammar and frequent spelling mistakes are a big red flag for employers; these mistakes are the worst impressions you can make via a one-page document. You should always run your resume through spell checkers such as Grammarly, and/or ask a friend to proofread your resume. You do not want a tiny mistake to hold you back from landing your dream job.
13. Choose the Right Format
Although resumes come in all shapes and sizes, generally speaking, there are three most commonly used formats: chronological, skill-focused, and a combination of the two. Which format is the best depends on multiple factors, including your work experience and the type of job you’re applying for.
- Chronological Resume: The reverse-chronological format is ideal for job applications that are focused on your past experience. For example, if you are applying for a barman role, you surely want your recruiter to know of places you worked before that have relevant experience.
- Skill-Focused Resume: If you don’t have much work experience yet, a good trick is to focus on your skills instead. Make sure to mention all the official degrees and certificates you possess, but also mention your specific skills and strengths that will make you a good fit for the job.
- Combination Resume: This format is often the most likely to land you the job, but to make it work, you need to have considerable work experience, as well as a fair share of skills relevant to the job.
How Do You Format a Resume?
Can you use color? Do you add an objective? How many pages? Do you include volunteer experience even if it’s not relevant to the job? All of these are great questions that can be extremely stressful when choosing what to put on a piece of paper to demonstrate that you are the best candidate for the job.
- Color: When color is used tastefully, it can really help accentuate certain parts of your resume and make it stand out among hundreds of other applications.
- Objectives: Recently, listing “objectives” have become more unnecessary; but, there is still some value to them. While a cover letter gives more of a personalized glimpse into you as an employee, an objective can get this across faster.
- One Page Limit: There is a great debate on whether or not you should stick to one page. One thing for sure is that all of your relevant experience for the position at hand should be listed on the first page. Some recruiters may only look at the first page, while others may want to see all the experience you listed. The important thing to pay attention to is relevance. If you’re applying for a director position with 10 years of experience, it is usually safe to say the hiring manager is not interested in your first gig ever – flipping burgers.
With all of that said, the best advice is to do your research. Understanding the culture and mission of your company will help you determine how to design your resume. A trendy marketing agency will likely be more open to creative risks than a top-tier law firm. With a powerful tool like LinkedIn, you may be able to find out who will be the hiring manager looking at your application and make educated decisions from there. If you are still in doubt, you can always go for a more traditional template.
14. Pick the Best Resume Layout
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” and choosing an eye-catching resume layout is a way to ensure that the recruiter will not forget about you straight away. Furthermore, a good layout will put your strengths in the spotlight.
The best part is that you don’t have to pay big money to a professional designer to get ahold of a resume with an attractive layout. On the contrary, you can find all kinds of resume templates online. Just make sure the one you choose isn’t too flashy, as that can easily have the opposite effect. Here are a few sites to help you find templates:
Check out these resume template examples from Canva.com as well.
In today’s competitive times, having a good profile and strong experiences will only take you so far.
Your resume is what helps you sell yourself and present your skills and experiences to your potential employer. Follow the above steps to help write your resume and you’ll have a stronger, better resume to hand to future employers.
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