How to write a resume to land your dream job in 2020:A Step-by-Step Guide

Human Resources

Once it comes to create a resume online or offline, the first step is getting the shortlist of your dream companies. Then, make sure that your resume clears the screening procedure. The resume screening is generally done by automated systems or the HR of the company, both of which look for ‘keywords’ on your resume and the second step is to make sure it can impress many recruiters at their first shot of eyes.

The following are the most relevant keywords or sections the HR or automated systems are looking for, during the screening procedure:

Education: This section should clearly mention your Institute’s name, City, Degree, Major and the year of your course beginning and end.

Scholastic Achievements: In this section, you should mention your general scholastic achievements like your rank in Competitive exams, your achievements in Programming Contests (like GSoC, ACM ICPC, CodeJam, etc.),

Internship Experience: This is a crucial section and you should take the utmost care when writing about your internship experience. They should be listed in the chronological order only, the latest one being at the top.

Personal Projects: This is another crucial section, much like the internship section. An important point that you should keep in mind is that you don’t really need to have a ‘certification’ for your project. Basically, even if you did an Android App based project on your own, you surely can mention it on your resume.

Skills: Write skills in the order of your proficiency. Write those first in which you are most proficient. Do not write unnecessary skills like MS Word, etc. Focus on key skills - programming languages, frameworks, tools, etc. For example, Python, C/C++, Java, Web Development (Django), Android App Development, LaTeX 2ε, Bash Scripting, MATLAB, GNU Octave, Prolog.

After you have taken down the above steps, its time to actually write your resume in a clean and error free way. For that, you can have tools like Grammarly (one of the best and intelligent tool to crrect speling, grammar and even semantic mistakes) .

Error Tree Resume Tool

I have divided the following into 3 parts (Template, Content, Miscellaneous):

Template (Step 1): Recruiters do not read your resume; they do a 15 - 30-second "spot check" of your resume, so keep it simple and awesome, consider these points before even thinking of what to write:

  • One Page Resume:
    It mostly recommended having your resume done in a single page document. It's more easy to go through and comprehend.

  • No Objectives:
    All an objective does is it states in a wordy way, what position you're interested in. The company already knows that because you applied for a particular position. At best, it'll just waste space. At worst, it'll limit you since it'll exclude other positions that might have been interesting to you.

  • Use a template:
    Unless if you're great with design, you probably shouldn't be creating your own resume template. It'll most likely look sloppy. Use a template, You can just choose a tool you want to use (like Google Drive), and search for some templates.

  • Use Columns / Tables:
    You should use Columns/Tables to keep Data organized and this makes it easier to read and saves space. Just make sure to hide the borders afterward.

  • Use Formatting:
    Use Bold, Underline, bullets to highlight important content accordingly, It is very important to have some hot points in the resume and more important to be able to highlight them. In my case, the Products I contributed to and their links are of high importance so I chose to annotate them with Underline [Please avoid using many colors], you can have a look at my resume for more insight. (My resume)

  • Choose a good tool:
    In my case, I prefer to write Online, so I chose Google Drive as my online resume editor (you can pick Word Online / Google Docs, etc.), with which I can save/edit my files anywhere without any setup and they come with some great templates.

Content (Step 2): By now you should have, a template, a tool and a basic mindset of how your resume will look. Let's dig deep on what you should write in:

  • You may want to consider creating a different resume for different companies, for this approach to work you should maintain a master/superset copy of the resume which contains all the content and you can select relevant content from it while creating the final resume.

  • Make Your Contact Info Prominent
    You don’t need to include your address on your resume anymore (really!), but you do need to make sure to include a phone number and professional email address (not your work address!) as well as other places the hiring manager can find you on the web, like your LinkedIn or Github profile.

  • Yeah, as you guest this is the best place to include all the content we talked about at the beginning of this article calling screening sections.

Miscellaneous (Step 3):

  • Proofread yourself, ask others to proofread for you, make sure you don't have typos or grammatical issues, and you should be good to go. Grammarly is one of the best tools for that please give a try.Error Tree Resume Tool

  • Upload it Online:
    I host my resume at Google Drive and forward the link to everyone I will like to get its opinion, which I keep on updating with the same name, so whenever somebody opens those links get my latest resume. It is in many ways better than the traditional way of sending a resume, also shows your open nature to change.

  • If you still chose to send a resume as an attachment, make sure you DO NOT send word/other editable files, the problem with word file is that the recruiter may or may not have compatible software and anyway nobody wants to edit it so send in portable document format (pdf).

  • Name your file smartly:
    Ready to save your resume and send it off? Save it as “Kamdjou Duplex Resume” instead of “Resume.” It’s one less step the hiring manager has to take.

  • Always write a small and relevant cover letter in the mail body(Don’t send it attached unless sending it for ATS) while sending your resume, it helps recruiter get a glance at your experience and personality.

  • You will need much more than this answer to get a good resume, do go through links in the comment if any and also take feedback after completing it, you can go forward with 2-3 templates and take suggestions on which to go forward with, etc.

Happy Job Hunting.

Share this with your network to help others getting their dream job, also if you happened to have some inputs for me, please drop it in comments.

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