Writing an Effective Resume
A decade back, an old mason had come to our house for doing some repairs to our old house. After his work was over my mother had requested him to build a small step which would help her climb down from the rear door to the kitchen garden outside. He had taken a longer time and effort compared to other masons who had carried out similar repairs before and I was a bit sceptical. Sure enough, he took time to build the small step of bricks and cement. However, when he was through the step was almost shining like a mirror. It became a testimonial of his work, a resume which could be shown to others to showcase what he could do.
We would do well to learn the lesson from the old mason. We need to present the good work that we have done, the tasks that we have accomplished, the challenges that we have surmounted. For us, the ‘step’ that we can showcase is our resume. It is our reflection and a blurred, misshapen image only results in delineating a distorted picture of who we are and what we are looking for.
Unfortunately, few of us devote time and effort to building a resume. A few aspects that we have seen repeatedly pertain to the following:
- The resume is not aligned with our aims and aspirations.
- It is not even aligned with the work that we have done.
- There are spelling mistakes. Nothing puts off a recruiter more than this.
- References have been given who are unable to give testimonials of the work or worse still give poor testimonials.
- Contact details are not mentioned.
- Huge rambling resume. We have frequently seen resumes that are in double digits in number of pages. Few recruiters wish to read our life-history.
- The contents of the resume are not in keeping with the social-media profile of the candidate
Well, the list goes on and on. We need to remember that a recruiter spends at best a couple of minutes with a resume. We need to put our best ‘step’ forward to attract her attention.
Dr. Jayant Mukherjee, Chief Mentor – Samcara