Your Resume is Ordinary!

If you are part of the 90% of the job-hunting population, your
resume is ordinary, boring, unattractive and … useless.

I say “useless” in the sense that it is not serving the purpose
that it was written for.

A resume is a personal leaflet intended to bring the potential
employer’s attention to the job-applicant’s capabilities,
competences, experiences, character and personality. It is meant to
“show-off” your features and the value that you can bring to the
company.

However, too many job-apllicants simply do not put in any effort
into crafting their resume (and, might I add, their cover-letter)
and opt to “follow the herd” without using their minds
appropriately to market and promote themselves (they search the
Internet for templates or buy resume-writting books from the
bookstore). After all, job-hunting IS a personal marketing and
promotion exercise.

How, then, do you market yourself through your resume? Here are the
top 10 resume tips you won’t get from anywhere else:

1. Keep your resume to 2 pages at most! Employers are busy and do
not have time to read (in fact, they don’t read, they skimp).

2. Give your resume a professional look. Make it look like it was
created by a professional instead of an amateur or student. Would
you read a leaflet or brochure that looks amateurish even if it was
stuffed in your face?

3. Your resume MUST carry a CORE message – that is, how do you fit
the job? What value will you bring if hired? Instead of stating
your “Career Objective,” I’d suggest that you state your unique
job-match message. Look at it this way, employers are not
interested in what you want, they are interested in knowing what
you can do for the company.

4. State your achievements in ALL your experiences, including
education. Most people will simply state what they have done (job
responsibilities/duties) and what education they have gone through.
What’s the point of telling employers that you have done
photocopying without telling them HOW WELL you did it? This is
similar to receiving your university results transcript that gives
only the subjects you have done but without the grades you have
achieved.

5. Leave out unnecessary and irrelevant items from your resume like
whether you are married, your passport/ID number, your photograph
(unless required or you are applying for a sales position),
referees.

6. There is no need to list your referees in your resumes. There is
also no need to say “Referees available upon request.” It is a
given that you have referees ready for work verification and
experience checking.

7. List items in reversed chronological order in each section. This
means, the most recent ones should be listed first.

8. If you are a freshgraduate, your education section should come
first (after your particulars, job-match message, and brief
professional profile) followed by experience, affiliations,
awards, non-work involvements, skills.

9. If you are have work experience, exhibit your experience section
before education.

10. Make the resume content easily readable. Use active verbs and
tangible numbers and percentages (e.g. Increased the company market
share by 100%) with bullet points instead of paragraphs of
description.

Remember this: If you follow the herd, you will step on sh*t. : )