Have you ever wondered what makes recruiters pick specific applicants over a broad range of others? How do these applicants stand out among many job seekers and grab the attention of employers at first sight?
Actually, the first thing that will tease hiring managers to meet applicants in person and boost their chances of being invited to an interview is their resume. A resume is more than a concise document that summarizes one’s history and skills. Your resume reflects who you are and how reliable and trustworthy you will be for the organization. So, it should be tailored and free of all mistakes and errors.
Here, we highlight the top mistakes to avoid when writing a CV. The first and most essential thing to do for designing a winning CV is to pick a professional CV template. If you have no clue about CV templates, many professional resume building websites can help.
Resumes that never get a chance
- Resumes that contain poor information about the applicant or extremely concise ones
- Confusing resumes that are badly structured
- Resumes that contain substandard format and layout, which makes them difficult to read
- Badly designed resumes that use unappealing fonts and colors
- Resumes that are not edited adequately, like ones that miss bull points or contain very long sentences
- Grammar mistakes are considered to be deadly mistakes in a resume
- Using a fake email address that does not look like a professional one, for example, [email protected]
- Adding outdated or irrelevant past work experiences
- Not mentioning required details in the education and work experience sections and lacking specific descriptions of what the applicant has achieved
- The heading of the resume is flat “ Curriculum Vitae”
- The resume sections are not appropriately labeled
How to write a winning CV?
Now that we have given a glance at what makes a bad resume, we are intended in this article to guide you on the process of writing a resume that will stand out for recruiters and get you an invitation to a job appointment.
Personal information
The first thing you should write in your resume is your full name; write it in the heading of your CV centered on the page in large bold letters. Then, complete the personal details section by adding your email address, which should be your first and last name, your home address written in a concise style, and your phone number starting with your country code.
Further information like nationality, date of birth, gender, and marital status are preferred not to be included in your resumes unless mentioning them will grant you some advantages.
Objectives
The objectives section comes next, where it is your chance to display your traits and how they will benefit the organization you want to work with. Avoid using conventional and short statements that do not convey a clear meaning.
Education and work experience
After writing your objectives, you will move to the achievement section, where you can showcase your superior academic performance and the grades obtained.
After that comes the education section, where you will include your obtained degrees and educational background and write about your work experience in a separate section.
In these two sections, you should customize the information you will fill out in your resume suiting the position you are applying for; use key phrases as the job advertisement so that Applicant Tracking Systems will filter your CV to the hiring managers. Don’t input outdated or irrelevant education and work experiences that will not add value to your application.
The entries in the education section and the work experience should be listed chronologically; start with the most recent ones and follow a month, year format. Try to mention all details when writing about past work experiences as companies, start and end dates, job position, and main job duties.
Skills
After that, you will write your skills in the skills section. Use descriptive and specific statements giving the impression that you know about and possess these skills.
Reference
Finally, write in the reference section the full names, job titles, and email addresses of referees that are ready to tell recruiters about how well you have worked together. Moreover, you can write the phrase “references are available upon request” if you don’t wish to include them on your CV.
Conclusion
After all, numerous ways enable you to create your resume yourself, such as a free online resume maker, a resume editor, or a graphic designer resume that contains lots of free cv templates you can easily personalize just by filling out your information.