Getting Your Resume Right is an Art. #5 Must Dos for Every Job Aspirant Not a story, a job seeker needs to draft his career summary and skills to land that one life-changing opportunity

Having put the best foot forward for accomplish targets and receive praises from the boss, employees tend to develop a bond with their respective organizations. However, each job has a certain time-period before the employees move onto better opportunities.

With every job comes an experience which brings along the sense of accomplishment and the need to utilize the gained knowledge for other purposes, to take on bigger challenges and prove yourself once again with different parameters and people judging your expertise.

The realization to move forward initiates an excruciating journey of resume building, from the scratch. No, you can't use the curriculum vitae you created years back. With time, trends have changed, so has the duration spent by recruiters to scan a candidate's profile.

Importance of Paper

Experts have varied point of views on how a piece of paper could define a job seeker's chances of landing his dream job. However, all agreed that merely jotting down points of what one has achieved and learnt in years won't take him anywhere unless a distinctive appeal is added to his resume.

"Experience is critical... Before any recruiter agrees to spend his and candidates valuable time for interview, he or she wants to meet the candidate - On Paper," believes Arun Kumar, the Managing Partner of Avon Resumes.

Every new job brings along new challenges and opportunities to prove oneself. To accomplish the task at hand, the candidate, "must be matured enough to understand the bottlenecks and knows how to overcome the routine challenges ahead," Kumar added.

Duration of Resume-Scanning

Having spent years in the field, recruiters are well-aware about the exact qualities they want a potential candidate to possess. It takes them no more than 10 seconds to decide if the candidate is of their meaning before moving onto the next one.

Those precious seconds hold the immense power to determine a candidate's future. Having many resumes to go through with minimal time in hand, recruiters are often only able to glance at the opening section which summarizes candidate's context of the experience along with transferable skills.

"The inevitable increased use of technology with gradual use of artificial intelligence/automation to filter out resumes even before a recruiter at time sees it. Sometimes the least time spent on a resume scanning it is as low as 30 to 60 seconds," said career counselor Shravan Shetty.

Skill Set

Clearly defined functional role and occasional keywords help the recruiters in assessing the candidate's competence. However, unnecessary usage of jargons can have a negative impact too. One needs to mention his work history/experience such a manner that it seeks attention of the recruiter.

Candidates need to present their strength of having exposure of working in the similar culture. While applying for a job, one must remember that, "the recruiter has enough supply of candidates and he needs to craft his story and connect his experience to the role," offered accordingly.

Customization of resume according to the organization shouldn't also be missed. "There is a high correlation between use of similar or same keywords as mentioned in the job description and alignment to organization's background as well as size," Shetty opined.

Tricks to Trap Attention

A resume must be sharp enough to not only grab the recruiter's interest but make him feel compelled to give you an interview opportunity. "Intelligent use of infographics highlighting past work experience in relevance to the role being applied for," can invoke recruiter's interest in the resume.

"A resume must be able to grab the attention of recruiter by its presentation, visual appeal, conciseness giving a quick overview of achievements and career advancement gained over the years," Kumar added. Exaggerating recognitions and achievements however won't be the brightest of ideas.

What to Avoid

Despite applying to a new company, one must stay loyal to the past employer and refrain from exposing credential information to impress the future recruiter. False information to cover up employment gaps might look like a benefactor in short term but has repressing effect in the long term.

Avoid writing phrases representing race, sex and religion. "Things such as gender orientation and religious views create conflicts in the minds of people who are screening the applications," warned Kumar.