How To Write the Perfect Resume

Putting together a resume, especially as a college graduate, can be pretty terrifying. You want to ensure that you have all the correct elements in your resume to land the job you’re pursuing. Here, you will get to know how to put together a resume in the best possible manner.

Before anything else, you must know the different sections to add to your college graduate resume when you are creating your first resume. Let us look at the prominent sections you must have in your first resume.

Name And Contact Information

These are the basic details that you must have on your graduate college resume. In this section, you will need to add your address, contact number, and email address. Format your resume to ensure that this is the first thing your recruiter sees on it.

Education

Next, you want to highlight your education. Since you are a college graduate, your educational history should bring about most of your achievements. It is important to add all relevant educational material that you can here. The basic details will include the name of your primary degree, your GPA, the institution’s name, and the relevant research or thesis you’ve done for it. Don’t miss this out as you will find that recruiters pay a lot of attention to this.

Let us have a look at an example:

A professional resume communicates your qualifications, experience, and skills for a job. The education and work experience sections receive a lot of scrutiny from employers to determine whether or not a candidate might be a good fit. There are different ways you might display your education and experience, depending on the type of job you’re applying for and your level of expertise.

How to List Education On Resumes

The education section on a resume informs recruiters of your background, which helps them determine if you’re a good fit for the role. Having the proper resume layout and format is critical. Apart from this, how you list your education matters.

What Information Should You Include?

Recruiters often look for a few necessary details when scanning your education section:

The name of the school.
Location of the school.
The degree obtained, if applicable.
Your professional field of study.
Year of graduation, if applicable.
Your GPA – unless it’s below 3.4.
Any relevant academic recognition or honors.

Where to Put the Education Section on Your Resume

If you’re a current student or recent college graduate, put your education section at the top of your resume to highlight your qualifications first. For experienced professionals, your experience should come first. Check out these dos and don’ts for the education section.

Tips for Your Education Section

Use subsections to break down your education information for readability.
Provide specifics if you want to include more details.
Tell the truth in your resume, as recruiters will most likely check your transcript.

Education Section Sample

Here’s how you can structure the education section of your resume. Remove or change this information to fit your circumstances and the job requirements.

College/University Name
Year of graduation
Degree, Major, and Minor
Your GPA

Awards and Honors
Include any academic achievements and honors you have here.

Certifications
Include any educational or professional certifications you’ve received.

Professional Development
Include any relevant professional development experiences, including courses you’ve done, seminars attended, and relevant professional organizations and positions.

How to List Experience On Resumes

Recruiters also review your experience section to see if you fit the job well. Here’s how to highlight your work history, including examples.

What Do Employers Look for in Your Experience Section?

Recruiters only have a few seconds to check your resume and will want to understand whether or not you meet the basic job requirements. What they want in a candidate is included in the job post, so ensure that you provide the most relevant information that matches the job position at the top of your resume.

Senior-level candidate – Include your impressive work experience in reverse-chronological order at the top of your resume to the last 10-15 years.
Mid-level candidate – Focus on the roles you’ve held that apply to the position you’re applying for and any relevant skills and experiences gained in your work career.
Entry-level candidate – List all paid, relevant work you’ve done, including temporary work, freelance work, independent projects, and internships.
Graduates with no work experience – Include paid and unpaid work, volunteering, unpaid internships, work for student organizations, and others.

Tips on How to Write Your Experience Section

Review the job description and highlight keywords to apply to your skills and experiences.
Consider two or three outstanding achievements and the values you demonstrated in your duties.
Be clear and concise in the experience information you provide.
Include details about each work experience in your resume.
Prioritize information that will make it easy for recruiters to make a hiring decision.
Include numbers that measure the value you could provide in your previous position.

Experience Section Sample
Position – Restaurant manager
The Brew Bistro
Head Restaurant Manager | May 2015 – Dec 2019

– Performed 40 operational-wide audits in compliance with internal procedures and safety and sanitation regulations to ensure the most effective service delivery.

– Developed a comprehensive training program for 300 employees in compliance with company regulations and government requirements – This helped reduce training time by 10%.

– Performed a full review of scheduling for five departments and reduced overall labor needs by up to 5%.

How you list your education and experience in a resume significantly affects how recruiters understand you and, ultimately, the decision they make on whether or not they should hire you. ResumeBuild website suggests time to make your resume shine with these simple steps.

Work Experience

Next, comes your work experience. While in college, you might have gotten internships or worked at entry-level positions, but you will still want to add relevant work experiences. This is where you need to make sure you are adding the correct information. You want your employer to know that you have it in you to work and develop more skills.

Showcase what you learned from previous workplaces, and ensure that these learnings apply to the job description. For every work experience, you pin down and add bullets describing what your responsibilities were and if any possible results are worth mentioning. Keep in mind that it should all be truthful.

Skills

You will have to showcase your skills for the last prominent section of your entire resume. Write down what you know is right, and don’t hesitate to write about the soft skills you possess. When writing your skills, you can try to match your skills to the work experience details you have mentioned. For instance, if you believe that you have written about an experience stating you managed an entire event, then you could add time management as your skill.

Additional Sections To Add To Your Resume

There are more sections that you can add to your resume, depending on the things that you have done. These are variable, and every person doesn’t need to have these. According to The Princeton Review, you should add details that set you apart from others. So, figure out whichever sections work for you here and add these to your resume.

Extracurricular/ Volunteer Activities

When you make your first resume, you will have to ensure that you add extracurricular activities or volunteer activities if you have ever done them. The more recent these are, the best it will be. So, don’t be afraid to list them down.

Honors And Rewards

Academic achievements should be your highlight as a college graduate. So if you have received any honors and rewards, you should make sure that you add them to your resume.

Certifications And Skills

Another thing you can easily include in your resume is any possible certifications you received throughout your academic years. These could be for any public speaking activity, online course, or sports activity you partook in.

Interests/Hobbies

Interests and hobbies build your character in front of your recruiter. It helps your recruiter understand you better. If you have a real hobby, nothing should stop you from adding it to your resume.

Proficiency In Languages

Having proficiency in more than one language is always a plus. If you have studied a particular language other than your mother tongue and have basic or expert-level proficiency in it, then you should ideally add it to your resume.

Look at one of the more effective samples provided by Harvard experts for college graduates.

Tips To Write A Successful College Graduate Resume

If you wish to indulge in effective resume writing, here are some tips for writing a resume.

Adjust Your Resume According To The Job You’re Applying For

The first thing you will need to do is look at the job description of the role you’re applying for. This will help you adjust your resume according to the requirements. Don’t just add everything to your resume. Instead, pick and choose what is relevant for that particular role.

Your Education History Should Be The Highlight

Don’t forget that your education history will matter a lot as a college graduate. So, ensure that you add information covering all the extracurriculars you have done along with this.

Try Quantifying Where Possible

Did you mention that you helped improve sales? If you have work experience, try to make sure you add some quantified details to it. Mention the percentage of how much you assisted in increasing the sales. This will make your contribution seem more plausible.

Action Verbs Make A Lot Of Difference

Always make use of action verbs when you’re describing your experience. Use terms such as “converted,” “developed,” “composed,” and others to ensure that you leave a lasting image for the recruiter.

Start With Most Recent And Then Go Backwards

Remember that you should use a reverse chronological order to keep recruiters up to date with your recent work and education. Start with your most recent education, work experience, and certification, and then move back in order.

What Do Experts Love In A College Resume?

According to Gary Burnison, a contributor at CNBC and someone with over 20 years of hiring experience, recruiters love a few things in resumes. One of the main things is the readability factor. Making use of the white space and not hogging up the entire page of your resume is essential. Along with this, formatting, cv writing, spelling rules, and other aspects should not be ignored in the process either.

Your resume should tell a story and be truthful rather than have too much jargon everywhere. Lastly, it should also not have cliché elements that most people add under their skills, such as being creative, a team player, hard-working, and other similar terms.

Best Tips to Students for Writing a Professional CV

A Professional CV is the very first step to getting a dream job. The theory that an employer spent several minutes reading the CV does not work anymore. The labor market grows daily, and competition between employers significantly increases compared to what? Yesterday? Last year? Ten years ago?. The employer does not have even two or three minutes for each CV when there are several hundred applications for one position. Based on Linkedin, the employer only spends six seconds reading a CV. So, a student has six seconds to impress and cause interest in a potential employer. Here are several tips that are highly helpful for every student who would like to have a professional CV.

A Professional and well-organized CV is the first step to getting a dream job. The theory that an employer spent several minutes reading the CV does not work anymore. The labor market grows daily, and competition between employers significantly increases compared to what? Yesterday? Last year? Ten years ago?. The employer does not have even two or three minutes for each CV when there are several hundred applications for one position. The employer only spends six seconds reading a CV.

So, a student has six seconds to impress and cause interest in a potential employer. Here are several tips that are highly helpful for every student who would like to have a professional CV.

Well-organized CV

The human brain quickly perceives a structured and well-organized resume. Therefore, the sorting of information about yourself is significant. If you have ever participated in training, conference, or competition, you can combine them in one paragraph. Write down separately: personal information, education, working experience, and foreign language skills.

There is a high possibility that an employer will not spend time on your resume if different categories are mixed. For instance, if participation in training and organizational skills will be together in the same paragraph.

Personal Information

Every professional CV should start with personal information. Such as official name and surname, email address, and phone number. You are not obliged to indicate your birth date, marital status, or nationality. Because that information may become the grounds for discrimination, you can add a photo, but be sure it looks professional; selfies and pictures with inappropriate backgrounds are unacceptable. youror

In the personal information section, it is highly recommended to mention the address of your LinkedIn Profile. If you do not have one, do not lose time registering right now. LinkedIn is a platform where you introduce yourself to professionals in your sphere. And in the future, it will be possible to find a job through it. If you have never had a LinkedIn account or are a beginner, the website – subscriberz.com will help you get followers.

Brainstorming

The next step is to take a pen and blank paper and write everything down that comes to your mind. Do not forget to mention every training, competition, summer or winter school, internship, working experience, education, or extraordinary achievement. Add starting and ending dates. The brainstorming technique assists you in combining important information and protects you from skipping. Moreover, attaching certificates and a diploma is your only professional CV advantage.

Foreign Languages

A professional resume must include a section on foreign languages. It is more impressive to give potential employers detailed information regarding the level of knowledge. Make sub-paragraphs and separate listening, speaking, and writing sections. If you do not have a language certificate, you can ask your teacher or a professor to assess your level. While indicating the results in your sub-paragraphs, use the internationally recognized system of defining the knowledge level.

Skills

Nowadays, education and knowledge are not enough to start a job. The employer should see your professional and organizational skills to be sure – you can perform a particular task. So, write down your research skills, time management skills, good communication skills, etc. Read job applications carefully, an HR manager always mentions the required skills, and you can use this info for your profit.

Recommendations

Recommendations from the well-known people in your field arouse trust. So do not forget to contact people who know you from work and ask for guidance. Those eminent people may be your lecturer, a person from the training, or conferences. Indicate the recommender’s contact information, email address, phone number, and job position. It is advisable to Have two recommenders.

Applying the same CV to every job application is a common mistake. The critical rule is that a CV should be related to the job application’s content; you must modify it every time. There is a clear example: if you are applying for the lawyer’s vacancy, do not mention exceptional achievement in playing the piano. Include that information in your education and experience for the lawyer’s job.

Creating a resume requires hard work; it takes time, but consider that in today’s world, if you want to succeed in the competitive labor market, you must have a professional CV. It is a golden ticket to get an interview with the employer, develop yourself, and reach your career goal. Incorporate the tips mentioned above in your resume, build your LinkedIn profile, and get closer to your dream job.

Things To Remember

When you’re done with creating your resume, you must make sure that you go over it once again. Below are some things you must remember to do when finalizing your resume.

Check for missing information.
Always edit and proofread your resume.
Get another expert to have a look for you.

It is crucial to make sure that when you’re writing your resume, you should do your research on how to go about it. Using resume builders to help with the process can further ease the process of creating your resume.

There are plenty of online resume-making applications, but you must choose the one that meets all your needs. An innovative and effective option to go for is the resume builder. But why would you go for this? Well, for starters, you should know that it is one of the best platforms that give you access to free professional resumes. It helps create the perfect resume through a simple process and allows you to get the job you are applying for.

The resume builder offers you a quick way to get things done, as all you have to do is choose a template, fill it out, and then download it. But that is not all. You get access to more than 4000 modern templates that are the perfect help for you to make your ideal job resume. Not only will you be able to pick the perfect sample for your needs, but you will also be able to make sure that you get to edit and review it countless times.