Effective Resume Writing

A resume is a medium for advertising yourself, its the first most means
which you use to present yourself and try to claim that you are the best
choice to your prospects employer. Through your resume you have to
showcase your major assets like

Qualifications

Experience

Achievements

Capabilities, and

Qualities

You have to prepare your resume in such a way that it gives impression in
first look that you are a perfect fit for the job you have applied. An
employer hardly takes 10-15 seconds to make a decision about your
interview call after looking at your resume. If your resume is well written
then definitely you will be in the shortlisted candidates does not matter you
have required potential or not but you will get a call otherwise your resume
will become a part of either recycle bin or dustbin, again it does not matter
if you are Einstein or Newton.
The first draft of your resume may not be so impressive because a resume is always an
evolving document which improves over the period of time, so keep modifying and
improving it after its first draft and keep its different versions with you.

Now without complicating the things, I will take you through step by step to
create a great resume for you. I'm assuming you have Microsoft Word to
write your resume, so now just follow the following steps

Step 1: Address Section

This section will be on top of your resume giving a detail about your name,
address, phone number and e-mail address. Keep this section left aligned
and put a bold line below to the section to separate it from rest of the
document as follows

JOHN WILLIAMS
Kondapur, Hyderabad - INDIA
Contact No: +91 2295103049
Email Id: [email protected]

If you are currently working then you can specify your company name just
below to your name as follows

JOHN WILLIAMS
IT Tools India Pvt Ltd
Kondapur, Hyderabad - INDIA
Contact No: +91 2295103049
Email Id: [email protected]

Step 2: Summary Section

This section will start with a heading called Summary and followed by
listing down your over-all experience, achievements, certifications and
positive attributes etc. It is very similar to a movie trailer where editor
keeps all great scenes from the movie and after watching that trailer you
get excited to watch complete movie. You will have to choose attractive &
heavy words while documenting this section.
To draft summary section you will have to think a while with peaceful mind,
jot down great points about yourself on a plain paper and check to make
them more impressive and effective. If they are not leaving any impact on
the reader then there is no point in including those points in the summary
section.
If you are a fresh graduate then you should specify about your small but
impressive projects you have done at university, highlight your
achievements and project capabilities etc.
Let's look at one example which lists down few points about a telecom
System Software Engineer, in your case this list can go from 2-3 bulleted
points to 8-10 points.

SUMMARY

A System Software Engineer graduated from Delhi University and

having overall 4 years of extensive experience in developing
state-of-the-art software modules for telecom industry specializing
with BSS & OSS.

Core expertise in rating and billing services related to 2G and 3G,

3G+ technologies including GSM, GPRS, VOIP, WiMax, V-SAT, VAS
Services, and Leased Lines with various access technologies.

A Software Associate Analyst grown System Software Engineer

having great experience with all the stages of SDLC including
designing, developing, testing and rolling out complex telecom
software's.

Exposure in drafting and implementing different processes and

have been actively involved in ISO 9001 and ISO 27001
certifications.

Result oriented, self driven, highly motivated, smart and hungry to

learn new technologies, methodologies, strategies and processes.

Step 3: Education Detail

Because you already have given summary of your experience and
achievements, so now let's start telling about our educational background.
There are many organizations who give lot of preference to your educational
background. So it is important to tell about your academic records. You
should put your highest degree on top and then lower qualifications at lower
levels.
This is extremely important to give information about your position, rank,
percentage or CPI along with degree or certification otherwise many
employers would throw your resume in dustbin if you don't give clear
picture of your educational background. Now lets see one example on how
to put educational records in a resume.

Education Detail

B.Tech in Computer Science (2005) from Ambehta University with

8.8 CPI.

B.Sc in Mathematics (2002) from Meerut University with 57.20%

marks

10+2 with Maths, Stats (1999) from U.P. board with 67.20% marks

High School (1997) from U.P. board with 77.20% marks

Secured first position in statistics during B.Sc.

Gold medalist at 10+2 level due to highest rank in mathematics.

If you have done various certifications and trainings then I would recommend to add a
separate section for Trainings & Certificationsjust below to Educational Section.

Step 4: Technical Skills

Next section in your resume will present your Technical Skills. This section
will start with telling your major skills on which you have good command.
So list down all the skills first where you are fully confident and then keep
rest of the skills at lower levels. Have a look at the following example where
candidate has good command over Pro*C and C but less experienced in Perl
so put Pro*C and C first and Perl later. This is important to note that all the
lines given below are not required in all the cases. If you know only one skill
then just tell about that skill, for example if you don't have any experience
in any protocol then don't give that line in your resume

Technical Skills

Programming Languages: C, Pro*C, C++, JAVA and PERL

Operating Systems: Red Hat Linux 9.0, Windows XP and Solaris

2.0

Tools & Technologies: Front Page-2000, CGI, J2EE, JSP, CORBA

Databases: MySQL, Sybase

Protocols: SMTP, FTP, PO3, IMAP

Others: Socket Programming, Multithreading, SDLC, OOP, UML

Step 5: Projects Detail

Here comes real story and this is really important to show your all the
projects, assignments etc. Reader should understand what exactly you have
done in past. Here you will put hands on experience with different type of
projects, people and tools and technologies. You have to be clear on what
was your, organizations, year of the project, roles, responsibilities, value
add, achievements etc. on each and every project or position. You should
also mention about what were the tools and technologies you have used
during that project.
If your experience is not project based then you can simply name this
heading as Experience Detail and list down all the experiences either in
buletted form or in simple & short 2-3 paragraphs.
You will start with the most recent project and continue listing down all the
projects till the oldest one. If you have done only training project or thesis
project then you can mention those projects along with your University
projects in the same format. Here I will give examples of two projects

Projects Detail
1 - Library Information System [National Library, NY,USA ]

Duration: Mar 2005 - Jun 2005

Team Size: 3

Role Played: Developer and Tester

Skills Used: Pro*C, Red Hat Linux, MySQL

This system simplifies day to day operation of a library which enables

you to maintain library catalogue on electronic media and to keep a
record of all the issued books in a particular day. Using this system, a
user can generate a report of all the available books for a particular
subject or ISBN and a report can be generated for all the issued books
for a particular subject or ISBN.
2 - Tiny Editor Implementation [Aligarh University, UP, INDIA]

Duration: Jan 2005 - Feb 2005

Team Size: 1

Role Played: Designer, Developer and Tester

Skills Used: Java, MySQL and Red Hat Linux

This was a small but useful text file editor which enables you to edit any
text files available on Linux System. Using this editor user can open
new or an existing file in text mode and can update its content and then
finally that file can be saved on hard disk.

Step 6: Strengths
After giving a complete detail of all the projects, now you can tell about
your major strengths. Look at the following examples, may be you don't
have all the strengths so list down only whatever you posses

Strengths

Good oral, written & presentation skills

A high tolerance of stress and enjoys responsibilities

Quick learner with good grasping ability

Action-oriented and result-focused

Lead & work as a team in an organized way

Great time management skill

Step 7: Extra Curricular

This section is optional because it is always not necessary that you would
have been involved in some extra curricular activities same time for various
roles its not required to have any extra curricular. Some time this section
may have lot of weightage specially when your resume reader and you have
same curriculum. I'm giving you a simple example to list down your
curricular activities

Extra Curricular

Have been a member of University Technical Council

Won first prize for debate at inter state level competition

Played Cricket at inter state level

Mono acting, Singing and Reading

Step 8: Personal Detail

This will be the last but mandatory section of your resume but will provide
all important information about you. A simple and easy example is given
here

Personal Detail

Date of Birth: 5th Aug 1983

Sex & Status: Male & Single

Nationality: INDIAN

Languages Known: English, Hindi, Urdu

Passport Number: A09384848 valid till 2018

Step 9: Conclusion
Now you are done and you have a great resume in your hand. Let me put
all the sections together in a word document to prepare a final resume. You
can download Sample Resume from here and you can modify this resume
based on your experience, skill etc. In fact resume building is an
evolutionary process and your resume will get better and better over the
period of time.
I will recommend to go through the following tips to add lot of value into
your resume.

Keep your resume file name short, simple and informational. A good resume file
name could be like JohnWilliams-Resume2013.docx

You can keep a small passport size photo at the top-right corner of the resume
but this is really not required.

Don't use various unnecessary formatting in your resume. Keep simple text as
much as possible in your resume. Have a look at sample resume. You will find
many HRs who prefer resume only in simple text format. So if you will keep
resume formating simple then it would be easy to format that resume in any
format.

Don't include too many phone numbers, email addresses or addresses.

Don't prepare too big resume. It should be as precise as possible.

Always give a summary of the resume at the beginning.

Always give a detail of roles and responsibilities you have taken during any
project.

Make sure the resume is neat, free of typing errors, and on plain white paper.

Never give a reason for leaving your previous job, your salary expectations, your
current job challenges etc, and better to leave such points to be discussed at the
time of interview if required.

Hope you enjoyed reading all the above instructions and we at tutorialspoint
wish you very best of luck.