Competitive Resume Writing

“Keep your message strong, succinct and dynamic.”

Over the past decade, as the U.S. employment market has undergone dramatic and long-lasting changes, resume writing has evolved into a way additional advanced and additional subtle method. It is not enough to write a short list of your work history and academic qualifications. The days are gone when a person used to send few resumes to the recruiters and few in the responses to the advertisements. A person was called for an interview one week and with couple of weeks he had to give a joining.

If you still remember those times, you must forget it because everything has changed now. The competition is more than ever before, highly qualified professionals compete for limited number of positions that market is offering. There must be something in you that distinguish you from others and resume is not just a piece of paper but it is your price in the market. You must convince the recruiter that you are the best choice for a particular position.

Resume writing has now developed into a proper skill. You need to clearly and briefly mention your professional career and to “sell” yourself at a high cost you must determine what experience, achievements and qualification are worthy enough to make recruiter realize that you are better than the crowd. Your resume must be fit onto 1-2 pages as it is very time consuming for recruiters to shortlist resume’s for interview. Your resume is the snapshot of you career not an autobiographical essay of your life. Resume is the only chance to make a first impression, it necessary to spend some time on resume and never write it in a signal sitting, think of the points that are crispy and will develop the interest of the reader in resume.  These things must be kept in mind while writing a cover letter as well.

Are there anv circumstances when a 3 page resume is appropriate?

If you are applying for a high post i.e. CEO of a company than you must include your affiliation, whether professional, civic or both, your achievements and milestones. The company is not only looking for a professional but a person with network of contacts and high reputation. In this case your resume may exceed 2 pages and it is quite acceptable in such situations.

For those of you in academia, scientific or medical research etc, your curriculum vitae can be longer than two pages. I would like to mention here that CVs and resume are different from each other. The purpose of resume is to “sell” while CV is to highlight distinctions, projects, managerial and technological skills, professional achievements, publications, education experience etc. CVs are the detailed documents.