In this chapter I explain the important parts of the resume and also use the keywords we mined in the previous chapter.
Look & Content
File Name: Firstname_Lastname_Resume or Firstname_Lastname_Mechanical_Engineer_Resume
Email: Something simple, you can create one with your firstname_lastname @gmail.com etc. Don’t provide silly or immature email addresses in the resume!
Font: Use Tahoma, Verdana, Georgia or Calibri. Don’t try to get fancy.
Font Size: Make sure the resume is easily readable. Remember recruiters and managers have to look at a LOT of resumes. Make their job a little easier.
Objective: Keep it simple. ‘Seeking a .NET developer position’ will do. Replace ‘.NET developer’ with your own target job title. Alternatively just write the job title in BIG FAT BOLD FONT instead of an objective. Since no one does this, it could get more attention by recruiters and interviewers alike.
.NET Developer
This looks better than the objective, you should definitely try it out!
Technical Skills: Add a list of technical skills you know. Make sure you know all the relevant skills for your target job and add it to this section. Make use of the previously discovered keywords(skills) here if it makes sense.
Summary: A 5 line summary with 3-5 bullet points will do. In this summary you will talk about technical experience and skills you have learnt
from college, internship, final year projects, pet projects etc. Refer the sample resume. Use the keywords or skills here as well.
Tables: Try not to use tables. I see a lot of freshers use tables for their education, remove the tables. Some application tracking software cannot scan the tables correctly. You can keep them if you really want to.
Hobbies: Get rid of them.
Strengths: If you have this section, remove this as well!
Languages: Guess what? Remove! Unless it is programming languages.
Declaration: I am very sure you have this on your resume. I got one word for you. Remove it NOW! OK that was three words!
Fresher Formula Magic Ingredients
This is where the magic happens. We are going to add a couple of personal/pet projects to your resume in addition to your final year projects. This serves two very important purposes. One it will allow us to make the resume keyword-dense to make it attractive to the algorithms and make them rank the resume higher in the results. Two, to impress the interviewer by talking about it, when they ask you to tell them about yourself. Got it?
Additionally it will help the recruiter in making a decision to shortlist you for an interview!
Pet project Ideas:
Coming up with ideas shouldn’t be hard. Find something you are passionate about that relates to your target job(s). Keep in mind, we need to use the keywords/skills from the previous chapter in the summaries and bullet points of these pet projects when adding it to the resume. Try to pick topics or problems that use or have a need for skills we have shortlisted.
For example if you are a Mechanical Engineer and looking for a design engineering job, or a drafting job. You can draft some car parts, machine parts etc. Google it to see what fun, creative and preferably relevant thing you can find. I am sure there are many people in your field working on interesting projects in their free time.
If you are ECE, Electrical, Instrumentation etc you can add projects relating to LabView perhaps? Or anything that will be helpful.
Textile, Road/Transportation, Bio-medicine and any other engineering and non-engineering degrees, I haven’t forgotten about you, just don’t know what I can suggest. Please come up with something and make sure your resume is full of awesomeness.
You can always ask your employed friends in your field what to work on in free time or what will help in your career. Get ideas from them or even log into LinkedIn and ask in groups created for your profession.
If you are an Accountant maybe you can learn all the advanced Excel features like say Vlookups, Pivots etc. By the way Excel is something everyone should become good at, there is always a need to use Excel in every job, some way or the other!
If you are a MBA graduate make a marketing research project, write about the findings. If you are a finance major, you can mention you read financial statements of publicly traded companies in free time. Income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement! I am a stock market enthusiast, I used to follow stocks, options and futures! I had developed a WPF application for Options analysis and of course I had added it to my resume! Get creative, it’s not that hard. Look online and forums for inspiration.
You get the picture. Come up with couple of them for variety. If you are looking for an IT job, you are in luck! Sky is the limit! There are tons and tons and tons of options for you guys.
Looking for a programming job? Build a simple website in your preferred language, desktop application too. Testing job? Test some public websites especially banks. Have you seen the Corporation Bank and SBI bank sites? They are hideous! They look like a 10 year old built those sites in the 90s! Do some testing, there are probably more bugs than features! Add that to your resume.
Bottom line is get creative and come up with at least two projects. More is good, one project for every TJT would be ideal. Then you can have one resume for each profile on Naukri. For every TJT resume add at least two pet projects, it is ok if the projects don’t directly relate to the TJT.
PROTIP: Mention the project as work-in-progress in its summary. This way if you are called for an interview soon after uploading this updated resume, you can tell, you just started this project and have not completed it yet. You can mention this when you or the interviewer starts talking about the project. But make sure you actually work on these projects. Just adding it for decoration will not take you far!
Pet Projects In The Resume:
Add around 5 lines of summary, use some of the keywords you researched previously while describing it. And add 3-5 bullet points of your responsibilities that also contain some keywords.
Final Year Project:
You treat this project the same way. You add around 5 lines of summary rich with technical keywords. And 3-5 bullet points of your responsibilities that also contain technical keywords. For this project the keywords don’t have to be relevant to the target job. As long as you have used technical keywords you are good to go!
When you write your responsibilities, don’t use first person (I did this, I did that etc). Rather use, Created …, Designed …, Involved in… etc.
Refer to the sample for a better idea.
Next Lesson : Multiple Resumes
Previous Lesson : How To Find The Relevant Keywords