Resume Writing Tips – How To Write A Great Resume

How To Make A Resume – A Complete Guide 

Your resume is not just who you are but what you do. It is the first impression you create as a professional. What would make your resume stand out from the others, that ‘X Factor’ intriguing the hiring officer enough to come back for a second read. 

Post pandemic, while most have lost their jobs, there have been more opportunities coming up too. Therefore, don’t just sit around fretting. Better update yourself with some great resume writing tips 2022. Sounds incredible but believe me that’s the best you could do. Get yourself some more skills in your area of expertise and make a fresh resume highlighting them. 

How to make a resume shouldn’t be the question you ask yourself every time you apply for another job. What matters is that it portrays your interest in a career and organisation. And now let’s look at some really good resume writing tips to help increase your chances of getting an interview.

Select The Perfect Resume Format

There are three main formats of resume based on your experience and what you want to showcase. Before writing a CV, choose the most relevant one.

Chronological – A very common resume format. It’s ideal for those with a lot of professional experience and no employment gaps. When you write a resume with this structure, you want the recruiter or hiring manager to observe your career progression.

Functional – This resume format helps to highlight skills and training. It makes you a great addition to the team even if you’re a fresher. The resume above has extra sections and doesn’t list work experience chronologically. This format is great for first-time job seekers: those without work experience, career changers, and those with employment gaps.

Combination – This is a combination of functional and chronological resume format. It has a work history section where you can list previous jobs and a skills list where you can list your top skills. Ideal for mid level candidates with some industry experience: job seekers switching to a different industry, and people reentering the workforce.

Resume Summary Vs Resume Objective

Recruiters and hiring managers read hundreds of resumes daily. It’s important to know how to write a great resume summary or objective that aligns with what they’re looking for. It will ensure that they read your skills and work history.

In the past, resumes included a job objective below the contact info. Today, many hiring managers and recruiters expect a short, snappy paragraph like a profile or summary. But how exactly is a resume summary different from a resume objective?

Tips For A Great Summary 

A two- to three-sentence resume summary summarises your career and past achievements. Candidates with relevant experience should apply. Use keywords from the job description and avoid personal pronouns to write a good resume summary (I, me or my).

Tips For A Great Objective

A resume objective is a summary of your skills, experience, and career goals in two to three sentences. It can help people who are just getting out of school or looking for their first job. Also those who want to change careers or have clear goals.

How To Create Work Experience Section In Resume

Organising and writing about your work experience may seem daunting, but with these resume writing tips 2022, you’ll be a pro in no time.

Format Of Work Experience Section

You needn’t employ a resume writing service for resume writing. Just make use of the following format for employment history and get that same professional touch.

Job Title: Add the job title in bold at the top of every entry of your employment history. That will make it simple for potential employers to scan and identify. You could even enlarge the font by one or two points.

Company, City, State: The second line should have the list of the name of the company you once worked for as well as the city and state where you were employed.

Dates Employed: Next, list your employment dates. No need to include precise days; simply mention the year or both the month and the year.

Important Duties: In your career history, never write about each and every duty you performed. Mention only the tasks that are most important as per the post.

Key accomplishments: Extremely significant but frequently ignored. Employers do know about your accomplishment. But they need to know how perfectly you carried it out.

Keywords: The experience portion of your resume should have some of the resume keywords. Personalise your resume for each job description by using the posting’s terminology. If an employer wants someone who can “manage executives’ calendars,” use that phrase instead of “keeping track of schedules”

If you’re adding more than one job history entry to the experience section, start with the most recent role and proceed in reverse chronological order. Make your argument for the duties and accomplishments of each entry using five or six bullet points.

Put your educational qualifications section before your work experience section if you don’t have much of the other.

How To Write A Great Resume Work Experience 

Following these resume writing tips will help you quickly learn how to create a section on your resume for your job history. Organising and writing about your work experience may seem like a demanding undertaking.

Your work experience should be stated in reverse-chronological order, which means that your current or most recent employment should be at the head of the list and everything else should follow after that. 

Begin Statements With Action Verbs

Action verbs help you boost your resume quickly and easily. Always begin your bullet points outlining prior or present work experiences with an action verb. Starting each bullet with an action verb expresses achievement, action, etc., and opens the sentence to lead into the challenge and consequence. It’s hard to follow “changed,” “increased,” or “achieved” with anything precise, measurable, and significant. So you don’t just say “managed projects” Instead, describe the project and your contribution. “Project manager introduces a new product line amidst a tight deadline.”

Highlight Your Accomplishments With Quantifiable Metrics

In a project, did you play a crucial role? Have you done things beyond their expectations?

Count them in. Employing managers and recruiters can see your abilities and potential contributions to the organisation by looking at your numbers. Utilising quantitative metrics in your CV gives you a 40% advantage over the competition because numbers are so valuable.

As a result, a statement with a quantifiable statistic would read something like this instead of just “Compiled general ledger entries”: “Compiled general ledger entries on a short timetable with 100% accuracy” or “Served an average of six tables each hour on 8-hour work shifts.”

Highlight Your Soft Skills & Tech Skills

Keep in mind that having strong interpersonal skills is absolutely necessary for your professional success. Skills such as effective writing and verbal communication, critical thinking, time management, creativity, and the ability to solve problems are highly regarded in today’s society. It is essential to include them in your cover letter and resume.

Give other people access to your technical and software expertise. Candidates for a role as an administrative assistant or one that is comparable are expected to have experience with Microsoft Office, to provide just one example. Candidates that are knowledgeable in their field will identify their levels of expertise with each application in the suite, as well as any training or certification programmes that they have successfully completed.

Resume Writing Tips – Education Section

Include all of your academic credentials, with the most recent appearing first. It is not necessary to include the year you graduated from high school or college if you have more than ten years of experience in the workforce. If you do not have any professional experience or if you work in an industry that places a high premium on academic achievement, the education section of your resume should accurately highlight your trajectory and accomplishments.

How To Write A Great Resume Education Listing  

• Start with the highest degree you’ve earned.
• Do include any further degrees in backwards chronological sequence.
• You can omit the information about your high school if you have a university degree.
• If your schooling is not yet complete, be sure to list your completed credits (some college on a resume is better than none).
• Include any relevant coursework, identify honours or awards (such as earning the Dean’s List) on your job application, and make sure to mention any prizes you have received.
• Complete your sentence with relevant after-school activities.

Resume Wow Factors And Additional Sections

Whether it’s about how to write a great resume for an experienced or a fresher, you should know all the ‘Extras’ to be added. Like what should be included on a resume so that it can be tailored to the individual?

Yes, that’s it. Include more information on your resume to make it stand out from the crowd. Additional areas of your resume can be used to exhibit pretty much everything about you, from the proud commendations you’ve received to the languages in which you are fluent and more besides.

Extra sections can be used in the following ways to make your resume more noticeable:

Certifications & Licences

Create a section to showcase your awards collection if you have any. Impressing hiring supervisors can have a significant wow impact. Employers enjoy bringing on winners. Your section for licences or certificates should come right after the education section and list the following:

• Certification title
• Name of the certifying body or agency
• Date of acquisition
• Your certificate’s expiration date, if relevant.

Hobbies & Interests

When you add your hobbies and interests to your resume, it helps show off a bit of your personality and can make your resume stand out from the crowd.

In addition, bringing up your hobbies can demonstrate to hiring managers that you are a good cultural fit for the position that you are applying for.

For instance, if you are applying for a job at a sporting company and want to demonstrate that you would be a good fit in with the other employees and that you are personally invested in the company’s mission, highlighting your passion for camping or fishing would be an excellent way to do so.

Languages Known

Do you speak a different language? Impressive! Your employment prospects will only increase if you highlight your language skills on your resume, and this is especially true for prospective employers who are interested in hiring candidates for international companies or for communities with large populations of people who speak a second language. Include the language, its international variation (for example, Latin American Spanish), and the level of language fluency you possess in each language.

Projects Undertaken

If you’ve worked on many personal projects, include them on your resume to show employers you’re motivated.

Mention programming projects on your resume if you spend a year producing an app or game independently to show off your accomplishment and explain any gaps in your professional experience.

Volunteer Work 

Love volunteering? Including volunteer work on your resume shows employers you care about more than money.

If you lack work experience, volunteer work shows you have a strong work ethic and can commit your time. If you’re a recent grad or just starting out, include volunteer work on your resume.

Proofread Your Resume Copy 

The last step is proofreading for errors, if any. The most frequent mistakes on resumes are typos and grammatical errors, which around 70% of hiring managers find unacceptable. Check that everything is written correctly by reading your resume again carefully. A useful spell-checking feature in our resume builder checks your paper and notifies you of any errors.

By following these formatting guidelines, you can also make it simpler for hiring managers to read your resume:

• Unless you have more than ten years of job experience, keep it to one page. 
• Your resume’s margins should be one inch on all sides.
• Use acceptable fonts, such as Helvetica, Arial, or Times New Roman.
• Use a font size of 11–12 for the body and 14–16 for the headers.
• Select either a single line or 1.5 lines apart.
• Save your resume as a PDF or DOC file with the name “[YourName]-[Desired Job]-Resume.pdf” in the filename.

Resume Writing Tips 2022 – Things To Avoid 

Don’t want to spend money on a resume writing service? Here are some resume writing tips on what you need to avoid. Once you understand these pitfalls, you are halfway through to great resume writing.   

• No “I” assertions in first person. Writing a resume is concise. Implied first person. You can be personal without using “I”. Instead of writing, “I directed hiring processes for three Fortune 500 companies,” write “Directed hiring practises for three Fortune 500 companies.” It’s short writing.
• Check your CV. Use Grammarly and have a friend proofread your resume, or engage a professional editor. Do not email a resume with grammar or spelling problems.
• Overused phrases are a resume killer. Instead of overused phrases, utilise powerful ones.
• Leave out goals. Outdated and useless. Generic objectives don’t tell the hiring manager why they should interview you. Instead, prove your worth.
• Use “team player” once. Recent research reveals it can hurt your chances of getting an interview. Many employers seek team players. Use an accomplishment statement to show you’re a team player, not the phrase.
• Don’t ignore soft skills.However, companies are finally recognising the importance of EI. Incorporate the soft skill into a success. You kill two birds with one stone.

Wrap Up – Best Resume Writing Tips 2022

With some great resume writing tips, you could learn how to write a great resume. Use a current resume writing format with sections for skills, education, work history, a summary or objective, and your personal information. Under each section, list and measure your greatest accomplishments. Affirm your effect and your ability to provide results for your potential employer.

Create a customised CV that shows you are a results-driven professional, interested in the job and ready to add value to the company will land you an interview. Even though it won’t guarantee you the job of your dreams, it is the single most crucial thing you can do to attract the attention of a hiring manager. The time and effort invested in learning how to write a great resume will save you money and bring best results.