After getting a lots of questions from my friends and social channels about “how to make my resume”. These are my suggestions to make your resume GOOD that can help you to get your dream job or Internship. You are free to use these suggestions and make changes according to your needs.

KISS — Keep it Simple and Stupid

What to include ?

Everything that you want to tell to your recruiter. This is the sequence that I should suggest you to follow keeping below points in mind but you can definitely reorder it.

For Beginners

1. Name and Contact Details.
2. Education
3. Projects
4. Skills and/or Technologies known
5. Languages known (position specific)
6. Honors and Awards

For Experienced Peoples

1. Name and Contact Details.
2. Work Experience
3. Education
4. Projects
5. Skills and/or Technologies known
6. Languages known (position specific)
7. Honors and Awards

Plus point (Common)

1. Freelancing work
2. Online Portforlio
3. Volunteer or nonprofit work
4. Internships

Plus point for Developers

1. Open Source Contributions
2. Competitive Programming
3. Contest Participation/Winners in regular contests or Hackathons
4. GitHub Profile Link
5. Host all your projects online

Plus point for Designers

1. Behance Profile Link
2. Creativity (Make resume info-graphic)

Plus point for Marketing

1. Google Certifications

I don’t know much about this field. :)

What NOT to include?

Content that seems that looks irrelevant for the position you are applying. For Example if you lives in Jaipur and writes “I know Hindi” then it doesn’t make any sense as almost all people knows it. It’s just consuming the useful space.

One Page Resume

Now most of you will ask why ?

Short Answer

Do you really think that the recruiters will be going to read your entire resume ? Big “NO” because every company receives lots of applications daily so like every people they also don’t have time to read it from the starting till the end.

Long Answer

Recruiters do not read your resume. They just scan it for 15–30 second. When your resume is too long, then you have written everything about you and it may possible that you have include things that not required or irrelevant. Now two things can happen in those 15–30 seconds, the recruiter sees the best/good part in your resume or some irrelevant stuff. If the worst case happen they will see the worst part and makes their decision as no hire. It will dilute your best/good part from your resume. Lengthy resumes do not make you more impressive. And if you think you can’t get your resume to just one page, trust me, you can! You just need to think about what is really important for a recruiter to see.

Introduction and Contact Details

This should be the very first part of your resume. As it will helps recruiters to know more about you and how they can contact you. Name, Mobile Number and E-Mail is must to be mentioned in this section. Also make sure your email looks professional not like [email protected] At least your first name should be included in your email. You can also place the links to your social profiles or that can be included in footer. This thing is optional but it depends for example you are developer or graphic designer then they expect GitHub and Behance profile links respectively.

No Objectives

The company already knows that because you applied for a particular position. It will just waste useful space. Also it may limit your profile to considered it for other positions that might be interesting for you.

Use a Resume Template with Columns

Use a template that has multiple columns. It makes your resume easier to read and saves space.

Use Tables

Use tables with 0(zero) border to manage content on resume.

Short Bullets

If there are paragraphs then they is a high possibility that they will just skip it. They are also normal persons so who wants to reads those paragraphs. So adding bullets points increases readability. Make sure that all the bullet point start with action verbs like organised, developed etc. Here are the list of Action Verbs. https://github.com/manishbisht/Competitive-Programming/blob/master/Resources/Action_Verbs_POR.txt https://github.com/manishbisht/Competitive-Programming/blob/master/Resources/Action_Verbs_Others.txt https://github.com/manishbisht/Competitive-Programming/blob/master/Resources/Action_Verbs_Projects.txt

Accomplishment Oriented

Your bullets should focus on your accomplishments rather than your responsibilities.

Quantify

Whenever possible, you should quantify your accomplishments. For example If you won an award, out of how many people?

Education

Add all your education related stuff in this section. Name of College/School, Session and percentage/GPA (percentage/GPA is optional try to not mention it if you have too low percentage/GPA). Make it more organised either write percentage for all schools/colleges or for none because mentioning the good percentage/GPA and not mentioning the bad ones makes the negative impact. This section can also includes the courses that you have taken online. For most of the good recruiters this section doesn’t plays important role in their decision. (For IIT, NIT, IIM etc sometimes it works because they also know how hard it is to get into those institutes)

Projects

Select top 2–3 projects to list on your resume. These can be academic required project or independent projects. They do not need to be completed or launched either. As long as you’ve done a good amount of work on them, that’s good enough! because in your Interviews they will defiantly going to ask questions on it.

Additional Experience

You can put additional experience, like leadership activities or awards, in a section like this (changing the name of the section depending on what you list). Be careful here to focus on what really matters.

Skills and Technologies (Only for technical positions)

It’s a good idea to list your skills and technologies that you know, but remember that anything you list here interviewer will going to test it. Also mention it with level of expertise For Example C++ (Proficient), C# (Prior Experience), etc

Languages

If you know any language that will help company in any way then make sure to mention it with more details like can talk in English or can write in English. For Example if you are applying for automobile companies that are Germany based and you know German then it is worth mentioning it.

Interests

This isn’t really necessary, but if you are applying for a job and want them to know you have interests related to the job this would be a good place to mention them. I would suggest you to keep this section at the very end of the resume.

Make it easy for Applicant tracking system

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software application that enables the electronic handling of recruitment needs. Now a days most of the companies uses it as everyone wants automation. So add things in organised way is that it can be easy for machine to filter details about you.

NOTE: Images can’t be parsed through these systems so make sure not to include images in your resume.

Extra Tips

1. Never lie on resume

Never lie on your resume because if you do this and get caught then company will be definitely going to blacklist you. They will never going to take the second chance.

2. Choose your fonts wisely

It is generally a good idea to stick to simple and readable fonts. If you make it hard for them to read then they will make it hard for you to get the job. ;)

3. Keep document size as A4

It will be easy for take print out and will easy for the company too when they take printout after sending them through email (I have once made this mistake after that I have changed default page settings to A4).

4. Grammar and spelling

If you’re applying for a job as a designer, does it matter how well you write? The simple answer is yes. Spelling and grammar mistakes will make you appear uneducated, ignorant and/or lazy

5. Make it early and then update monthly

If you are not planing to apply in next 1 month then also I will suggest you to start making it early. Because the resume that is made day earlier is far better then the one that is made few time ago and modified multiple times. Try to modify resume on regular basic and add more relevant and exciting things to it.

6. Remove repetitive information

Never write the same thing multiple times in your resume even not your name. Trust me this is not your exam answer sheet where you write the same thing multiple times to get passed ;)

7. Use space wisely

Play with page margins, borders and font sizes because you only have one page to write.

This is the link to my current resume http://goo.gl/Rro9Sk. Hope this post helps you to make your resume better.

Need help in something else. Feel free to ping me anywhere. I am not too hard to reach. Please do your homework before reaching out to me so you don’t end up asking some random question. :)