Surviving the resume blackhole
June 13, 2023
In our years of experience conducting career workshop and training sessions, our courses on effective resume writing are always highly anticipated by our participants. Many individuals, regardless of their life stage, often struggle to craft a resume that effectively captivates potential employers. Therefore, we decided to gather some general tips and tricks from our training sessions to guide you through the different components of an ideal resume.
1. Professional Summary
Since this section is open-ended and less structured, it is the best place to showcase your personal brand and story as well as your unique voice. Begin sharing who you are (e.g., a student at XYZ University, a career coach, etc.) and your defining qualities. After which, you can elaborate on what you are passionate about and provide a brief summary on how your current skills, strengths and past experiences relate to this passion. Finally, share your career goals as well as any missions, purposes or values that drive or motivate you to achieve these goals. Remember to keep your professional summary short and concise while still ensuring that it encompasses your best qualities and conveys the intended message. This makes your resume more memorable from the get-go and less likely to lose the attention of hiring managers.
2. Summary of Skills and Strengths
This section shows potential employers how you stand out from the countless other candidates who are applying for the same position. Draw on any skills and strengths you gained from past internships, jobs, co-curricular activities, projects, volunteer work or exchange programs. If you are feeling stuck, a trick is to refer to the job description of the role you are applying for and pick out any required or good-to-have skills. Using these as a guide, you can then reflect on your own skills and experiences, and state those that are relevant to the role.
3. Education
Stating your education background is especially important if you are a recent graduate with no work experience or if you have recently completed a new degree that will help you transition into a new industry or function. Make sure you state the degree or diploma you graduated with and the year that you graduated. If you are still a student, then state your expected graduation month and year. An example can be seen below:
4.Working Experience
The job description (JD) is the best reference for you to draft the first three to four bullet points of each work summary. Read the JD in detail and identify the relevance of your experiences to the expectations stated. Don’t forget to include the start and end dates of each job you had, as well as the specific job responsibilities and projects you were involved in. For each statement written, you can boost its effectiveness by adding on how your role helped to value add to your past organisation or project’s operations. For example, instead of just writing ‘I inspected completed installations and observed operations.’, you can write, ‘I inspected completed installations and observed operations to ensure conformance to design as well as compliance with operational, safety and quality standards.’. You can also use power words that hold more impact and emphasise initiative and innovation. For example, instead of saying you ‘led’ a project, you can use words like ‘chaired’ or ‘spearheaded’. Another example would be to use ‘engineered’ or ‘designed’ instead of ‘implemented’. If you have a portfolio of your past work, you should also include their links here. Some useful resources to help you with this step include linktr.ee (helps you create a single page that neatly compiles all your links), tinyurl (shortens long links), Wix and Squarespace (allows you to create your own websites).
5. Membership and Affiliations
Memberships and affiliations that are added into your resume should be relevant to the job that you are applying for. For each entry, include your position as well as the year that you joined the specific committee or group. Sharing your involvement in such groups shows proactivity and interest in furthering your expertise and knowledge in the relevant field. It also shows that you are up to date with developments in the industry and that you have a broad network consisting of other professionals and field experts.
6. Technical and Computer Skills
If you are applying for a role in an industry that requires specific administrative, operational, or technical knowledge and skills, this segment is especially important. As long as you are certified in a particular technical or computer skill, include it here. You can also state the educational institute in which you obtained the certification from. Here is an example:
Volunteer work is a good way to let employers see your versatility. It shows them that you are able to apply your skills and knowledge practically in community settings beyond just a school or work context. It also demonstrates your people skills and ability to work effectively with stakeholders in the community. Other examples of skills that you can highlight through volunteering experiences include managerial, planning, sales and fundraising, negotiation, accounting, and marketing skills. If you are applying for job positions in non-profit organisations or companies that frequently liaise with volunteers to carry out its operations, you can all the more use this segment to your benefit. If written effectively, it can show employers that you have a good grasp of various operational concerns in the non-profit sector as well as the ability to understand and accommodate to volunteers’ perspectives.
On a final note, think of your resume as an opportunity to tell an impactful story of who you want to become and what you strive to achieve in your career. With this mindset, you will be able to secure an interview. We wish you all the best in writing your next resume! If you are interested in learning more about the individually guided and customised career coaching services provided by CTES, you can visit our website or contact us at [email protected] to learn more.
Topic(s): Resume & Cover Letters
Interpersonal Skill
Commercial World
