How to write a good resume – advice for new graduates
Picking up where the previous post - How to Write a Good Cover Letter – Advice to New Graduates, left off, this post discusses how to write a good resume to accompany your cover letter.
First, do not go overboard, keep things simple, and keep everything to one page. Use white spaces. Just think about it, during the peak of the hiring season, a HR manager will have spent more than ten hours a day at work. Now he or she sees a sheet of A4 paper where every possible space is filled with ink, what do you think goes through his or her head?
Secondly, write Graduation Date, do not put down XXX – present for any education. Only include GPA for your major, TOEFL, or GMAT scores if they are high. If they are not, don’t include them. How high is high? For GMAT, over 730, for GPA, over 3.5.
Thirdly, for the Experience and Activities part, follow the principle of Numbers and Results. Rest assured, all applicants have done a lot of different things and have learnt a great deal, but if you simply cram it all into your resume, the employer would just think so what? The key here is to think in terms of results rather than actions. What is a result then? Have a look at the company’s annual report - every company states its KPI (Key Performance Indicator). This is the result that investors looks for. The same logic applies to a HR manager – if there are just actions and no results, it is all meaningless. For example, when you were a trainee at a company, what was your performance evaluation score, what percentage of the annual targets did you meet?
Having said it so many times, it must now be clear to everybody that, put simply, your resume must be written with results in mind. Looking at your resume, every line in it must have a number, or represent a result. If you truly grasp this concept, it can even help you to set clear targets for yourself in the future, and make you more efficient at completing tasks.
