College Crunch

Writing a resume is all important when you are hunting a new job. A good resume is a shop window for your skills and a way of show casing your experience. You use it to let companies and recruiters know just what your abilities are and where you have been using your skills.

So it is vital you have a great resume. Yet many fall by the wayside. There are plenty of great, skilled jobseekers out there who won’t get the job they want because they don’t know what they are doing when it comes to writing a resume. But by picking up a few basic resume writing tips you are able to bypass this problem and make sure that you are being seen by the best recruiters and companies available.

The most important skill in resume writing is layout, and it is one that is often the most abused by people who are just trying to put their resume together. All you need are four basic resume writing tips to ensure that yours is legible, presentable and professional.

1. Contact information at the top of the resume

This is always to go at the TOP of the resume. If someone is interested in getting in contact with you because they think that you have the skills and experience suitable for the job the last thing you want them to be doing is guessing where your contact information is. Put it at the top of the page, where most people would expect to find it, and you won’t have any recruiters or HR managers giving up for want of contacts details.

2. Always include a key-skill list when writing a resume

A key-skill list is vital when resume writing, and yet it gets left out far too often. Think for a moment, when a recruiter or HR manager is reading your resume what are they doing? The odds are they are not technically minded so they are reading through trying to see certain buzz words and skills. So make it easy for them, put the skills you use in a easy to read list and then make it prominent, just below the contact information at the top is the right place for the list.

3. Layout your career experience

After the key-skills list comes your experience. This needs to be in reverse chronological order, so your most recent job is at the top. This is to make it easy for those reading your resume to see what skills you have been using most recently. In the description of the job include any skills used, even if they are in your key-skill list, and make sure you quantify what you can. Targets hit, money you saved the company, value of projects worked on etc, etc. You want to impress the reader.

4. Include all qualifications when writing a resume

After your career experience comes your qualifications. We are not just talking about your education here but make sure that you include any qualifications gained in work when you are writing a resume, professional bodies joined, awards etc. you want to make yourself sound as qualified as possible so make sure you put in everything relevant.

So there you have it, four great, simple to use and very effective resume writing tips that will help your resume stand out from the crowd and get you the interviews that you want and your skills deserve.