Tips

1. Don’t Put Everything on There

Your resume should not have every work experience you’ve ever had listed on it. Think of your resume not as a comprehensive list of your career history, but as a marketing document selling you as the perfect person for the job. For each resume you send out, you’ll want to highlight only the accomplishments and skills that are most relevant to the job at hand (even if that means you don’t include all of your experience). Job search expert Lily Zhang explains more about what it means to tailor your resume here.

Tips

2. What not to include in a CV

There are things that ought not to make it to your CV and some of them are:

• Date of birth, age, marital status, religion beliefs
• Photographs: If you are not applying for the position of a photographer, a model or an actor, a photograph of yourself is absolutely not needed in your CV.
• Short term employment: Don’t list short term employment so the recruiter would not see you as flaky and unreliable
• Lies: Always endeavour to produce genuine information on your CV.
• Social media links not related to the job: ė.g. Instagram and Facebook handle. These are not important.

Tips

3. Be honest!

Studies indicate that job seekers often lie about their work experiences on their resumes. But with honest and well-written employment histories, even job seekers with less-than-perfect backgrounds will secure interviews. The best strategy for your resume is to always be truthful about your background.

Tips

4. Keep it Simple

We’ll talk about getting creative in order to stand out in a minute. But the most basic principle of good resume formatting and design? Keep it simple. Use a basic but modern font, like Helvetica, Arial, or Century Gothic. Make your resume easy on hiring managers’ eyes by using a font size between 10 and 12 and leaving a healthy amount of white space on the page. You can use a different font or typeface for your name, your resume headers, and the companies for which you’ve worked, but keep it simple and keep it consistent. No matter what resume format you choose, your main focus here should be on readability for the hiring manager. That being said, you should feel free to…

Tips

5. The difference between a CV and a resume

Both words are sometimes used interchangeably and can be confused for one another but they are not the same. Although subtle, there are quite a few differences between the CV and the resume and some of them are:

1. Length:
   In terms of length, the CV is lengthier than the resume as it includes much more information about details of the candidate’s history. The resume is a much shorter version.
2. Function:
   The CV gives detail of one’s professional life to an extent while the resume is just a summary of one’s education and employment history.
3. Layout:
   The details on the CV are written in chronological order while that on the resume is not. Also, the resume is written in the third person while the CV can either be written in first or third person speech.

Tips

6. Have a trusted pair of eyes review your resume

Knowing what to highlight in your resume’s experience section is one thing; actually writing it in a way that is clear and concise is another. Not only should this section emphasize your skills, it should also convey the value you’d bring to a company. Could you use some help putting that down on paper? Get a free resume evaluation today from the experts at Monster’s Resume Writing Service. You’ll get detailed feedback in two business days, including a review of your resume’s appearance and content, and a prediction of a recruiter’s first impression. It’s a quick and easy way to put a little extra professional polish on your credentials.