With your experience and skills, you might wonder if there could be a special effect on recruiters’ minds by formatting a decent resume. Yes! And that’s why composing an adequate resume is necessary for a good impression. As the proverb says, the first impression is your last impression.
One must have plenty of questions in mind. For instance, what major skills should I include in my resume? Should I include my short-term job experience in a resume? How to mention gaps in a career in a resume so that the resume does not look unpleasant.
Well, all your questions will be answered further as we have brought you the best resume writing tips for experienced professionals. Take a look at these tips and tricks to make your resume decent and effective.
25 Resume tips for professionals for building an effective resume
Here are the top 25 resume writing tips for experienced professionals:
1. Reverse Rule for Mentioning Experience
Have you heard about the reverse rule? Let me tell you about it. The reverse rule is all about mentioning your experience in reverse order. That means your most recent job should first follow your previous experience.
Here is the whole format of a reverse rule resume you should adopt:
- Personal information as header (Name and contact number).
- Mention work experience starting from your most recent job. You can make a separate column for internships. Well, it’s up to you to make it creative but brief.
- Experience followed by credentials and education.
- Describe in brief your volunteer experience if you have one.
- Include an optional summary.
Hence, this is the comprehensive format of a reverse resume.
2. Keep your content brief and up to a point
All the mentioned 25 resume writing tips for experienced professionals will lead you to form concise or brief content, which is the most crucial part of building a constructive resume. There can be two cases:
- You are a less experienced
- You are a well-experienced
In the first case, your resume must not exceed a page. All your desired skills, education, and experience should be as brief as they can not overstep a page.
Talking about the second case, if you are a well-experienced professional, and your experience is truly worth it to mention, then you can write your experience in not more than two pages. Even highly experienced individuals do not possess a resume of more than two pages.
3. The best stuff at the top
Another tip among the resume writing tips is to put your best stuff at the top. For instance, your best experience should occupy either second or third position but not below that.
And writing the best stuff at the top should not get confused by writing cute or buttery stuff on your head. It should be your skills and experience, which is also up to a point.
4. Do not make your resume a career history
There is no need to put every kind of information on your resume. A resume is not your career history. It’s all about your aptitudes and achievements in a nutshell. The resume must contain specific episodes that are truly worth it for occupying the desired position.
For instance, your skating skills do not count for applying for a tech content writing position. It will only count if you are applying for the position of sports content writer.
5. How to put your job or career gap in your resume?
No need to beat around the bush. Don’t try to make your career or a job gap the elephant in the room. Just mention the career gap in brief with a valid reason.
If the reason is parenting, then no need to mention that to become a good homemaker and obey the responsibilities of a good mom, I need to take a gap in my career. Or because of my father’s death, I was unable to concentrate on my career but now, etc. What is the need to do so?
Just mention your reasons straightforwardly as all recruiters used to be quite sensible to understand these obvious reasons. So, one should not use their writing skills in writing such excuses.
6. Making it as simple as possible
Yes! A straightforward resume. That is what a recruiter requires. Don’t use your creative mind in deciding fonts and colors for your resume. I hope you will not use any other color to write a resume. The fonts you can use include:
- Arial
- Helvetica
- Century gothic
You can use other than these mentioned above, but that too must be simple. What you can make creative is writing your name or company in a different font style.
7. What not to mention in contact information?
You must be aware of what to mention or what not be mentioned in your contact information. I am sure you are not mentioning your personal or private Instagram profile on your resume. Think of recruiters who will move on it, and found on bio, written a foodie girl. It will not have a nice impact. Yeah! Such a resume arrives.
Just mention your LinkedIn and Twitter profile if you have one, especially if your job is somewhat related to getting on social media.
Here is the list of what information you should in your contact information:
- Name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Website if you have one
- LinkedIn profile
- Twitter profile(optional)
No need to write your home or working address as it does not mean anything.
8. Prepare a thorough read resume quickly
Wait! I hope you all know why you are reading these resume writing tips for experienced professionals. To build an effective resume that gets stuck on the minds of recruiters. And that will only happen if you put your creativity into carving a read-through quickly resume.
And that too will all the skills and information recruiters must know about you to provide you the desired job. A quick, readable resume with all the required information recruiters are searching for – that’s what a smart resume looks like.
9. Resume for short experience individuals
Here is the question of individuals with less experience in the required field—no need to worry. You have to prepare an efficient cover letter attached with your resume. Just mention creatively why you want to work with the company and how efficiently and skillfully you can put up with the company’s work. Additionally, you can attach your intellectual projects too if you have any.
10. Write down degree content
The resume must contain not fully but partially down to a level of content. Down simply means to be specific.
Writing much about the industry can indicate that you have much copy passed the skills and things. Make sure to make the content readable and understandable even by the low experienced individuals in the field.
11. Writing style for pellet points
Well, if you are mentioning bullet points in your resume, make sure to keep the limit up to 5 or 6 and not more than that.
These are maximum while minimum they should be 4. The bullet points that must focus on your talent should be precise for recruiters or professionals to go through them.
12. Add value to the bullet points of your Resume
Yes! Now how to add value to specifically bullet points. Let me tell you that bullet points contain the major talents and skills of individuals.
To add value to these points, you just add a brief, readable line about how these skills will benefit the company you want to work with. As bullet points are the reading heed of recruiters, then value bullet points can have an efficient impact on their minds.
13. Mention every kind of work on your resume
A resume can consist of all kinds of experience you have taken in your career relating to the field you are applying for. For instance, you can mention all kinds of below-mentioned positions in your resume if you have experienced:
- Part-time jobs
- Full-time jobs
- Paid work
- Unpaid work
- Volunteer position
- Internships
- Academic projects
Well, if you are a competently experienced individual, then there is no need to mention internships or projects as it will only increase the crowd in your resume. Mentioning such positions is only for less experienced individuals.
14. Words to use in your resume
Please don’t go for those continuous repetitive words every next person uses in their resume. Be smart to use words in your resume.
Here are some flexible words mentioned that you can include in your resume:
- Committed
- Diligent
- Modernized
- Valuable
- Led
- Launched
- Redesigned
- Dynamic
- Accomplish
- Advanced
- Resolved
- Volunteered
- Created,
Resolved or created like words can even describe your career gap decently.
15. Words not to use in a resume
The use of repetitive or boring words can distract the attention of the resume reader from reading the resume, and your resume will then be counted with the same countless resumes in the almirah.
A few examples of such not to use words include:
- Results-driven
- Phone number
- Hard
- Seasoned
- Highly qualified
- Learning
- Responsible for
16. What to put first?- Graduation or Experience
If you have been in the professional field for several years, then you must put your experience on priority. On the other hand, if you are a fresh graduate, then your qualifications should be at first followed by your acquaintance in the relevant field.
17. How to write the educational qualifications?
Here too, you have to follow the reverse rule by keeping your qualifications in reverse order. For instance, if you are a postgraduate, this qualification should be at the top, followed by graduation and secondary or higher certifications.
This will make it easier for the reader to go through your educational qualification to get an idea about your academics.
18. Are online courses worth mentioning?
Well, especially in this pandemic-prone world, yes! Continuing education or online courses are worth mentioning. They are widely accepted and welcomed by every decent person as it indicates your dedication to the desired field.
And there are various well-recognized institutes already opened and some are reforming to turn online. So, online certification programs are worth mentioning in a resume.
19. Make a checklist of skills to be included in a resume
You have earned your skills, so it is worth mentioning in the resume. Creatively mention them whether they are computer language skills or software skills. If the skills are somewhat related to each other, then you can add a separate sub-column in which you can speak of the related skills.
20. What interests to mention?
You can surely mention your interests in a resume only if they are somehow related to a job.
For instance, mentioning Kathakali’s interest in applying for a position as a dancer is surely worth it. But your cooking interests wouldn’t work unless you are applying from a chef standpoint.
21. Don’t forget to mention your achievements
Every traditional resume format is advised to include experience and educational qualifications in brief. But do you know that mentioning your awards and achievements can do wonders in preparing an effective resume?
Include the awards even if they are not known worldwide. For instance, ‘silver medalist as a team leader of successful human resource interns’. This reveals your leadership qualities.
22. How to handle the gaps in your career
Try to explain gaps in your career creatively and that too with valid reasons. For example, shutting off a company due to a pandemic could be a worthwhile reason. Or relocation of a company could also be considered valid.
23. Naming your resume
Now you might be thinking about what the relation here is with naming a resume. But it too provides a decent effect. You can name your resume Aditi Jain’s Resume. Don’t go for correct grammar such as ‘The resume of Reena Roy.’ Keep it brief.
24. Avoid using pleasing words
Don’t try to fill up gaps in your resume with pleasing words. This would make your perfect resume look out of professional. Use professional and smart words to fill your short gaps in a resume.
25. Proofread the resume at least thrice
The last but the most crucial step is to proofread the resume thrice. You can ask a professional or family or friends to read the resume and ask if it looks efficient. Moreover, spelling, typing, and grammar mistakes should never be in your resume. Such silly mistakes are enough to destroy your decent resume and first impression.
Conclusion
Hence, these were the 25 resume writing tips for experienced professionals. Just follow these tips and look at how effective your resume will look. Now prepare your resume and be ready for a rocking impression on recruiters.