Have you ever noticed this? All men want their wives to look homely and unnoticeable, but choose arm-candy to be fluffy and noticeable. While wives are expected to be elegant, clean and straightforward, it is okay for arm-candy to be loud and glorious-looking. Because one is for the long-term and another is open to passing hands without evoking any great pain pangs from you. So it is all about presentation and formatting!
If your resume is trying to stand out with out-of-the-ordinary fonts, too many bullet points, printed on scented paper and is trying to look “glorious” it may be cut out for the trash can. On the other hand, if you want your resume to be treated with respect, handle it with ordinary fonts – clean and elegant – without too much gloss and glitter, and you have every chance of it being the chosen one.
So what makes a resume classy?
It’s all about positioning. If you want to position yourself as the VP-Marketing don’t start off listing your experience, right from your internship days. State only relevant experience.
Keep it simple and consistent. If you are sending an e-resume, use common fonts like Arial, Verdana or Times Roman. Immaterial of whether it is printed or online, use enhancements like underlines, bold or italics to guide the reader. Keep the styles consistent.
Personal information is not for billboards. Start with personal information, but don’t reel out your father’s and mother’s current marital status and how much you love your parents – Well that exaggeration, is just to drive a point. Got it?
Talk about yourself. Don’t define the project/assignment in detail. Define your role and task and how you went about bringing results. Quantify your performance. Show the numbers.
Get the Action in Verbs. Use action verbs to define your responsibilities and accomplishments. Organize your thoughts about the role and use affirmative action verbs to demonstrate what you have achieved.
The degree of Degrees: List all relevant educational qualifications, awards et al, and stick to the point. Forget about that one workshop that you attended on Leadership unless it is from an institute of repute.
Keep it short. Keep your resume concise, relevant to the job and not more than two pages. Don’t bother to include your achievements in Kabaddi during school days, unless you have represented the State or the Country. If you are a fresher, keep it on one page and do talk about your volunteering, involvement in sports and college fests, extra-curricular activities, special-skills like languages, music, art et al. It gives a peek into your personality, and that is important for campus-recruitments.
Match the position. Tweak the resume to match the employer’s job specifications. Research the employer, and match the position, with the right key-words.
Check, check and re-check. Proof-read and check for grammar. Ask someone to critique it and rework on it. You may never get another chance to explain why that extra “a” is only a typo.
After all this effort, you can be sure that your resume will be treated with respect, much like the proverbial wife who knows it all, but who is confident enough to remain classy.
Have you ever noticed this? All men want their wives to look homely and unnoticeable, but choose arm-candy to be fluffy and noticeable. While wives are expected to be elegant, clean and straightforward, it is okay for arm-candy to be loud and glorious-looking. Because one is for the long-term and another is open to passing hands without evoking any great pain pangs from you. So it is all about presentation and formatting!
