What is a resume? and How to Choose a Best Resume Format?

The Resume can be defined as an organized representation of an individual explaining their skills, education, experience in work, and achievements to best suit the job position he or she is applying for. The meaning of the French word “resume” is “summary”, and is appropriately so, as we try to specify our academic and career achievements and qualifications in a resume.

How to Choose a Best Resume Format and the purpose of a Resume?

Whether you are transitioning to a new job or applying for a job as a new candidate or student, the resume gives your first impression on your behalf. It tells your story in a manner that makes you feel wanted in that field. You can make the resume more about your skills, major achievements of your life, or you can shift the attention to your work experience. While writing your resume you should always describe your qualities that are required in the field.
While recruiting, whether it is for marketing job or managerial position, a developer, or any kind of creative work, interviewers always look at the key skills, phrases, terminologies, and if they are matching for the job description. One can use a resume for different reasons:

• Interview preparation
• Managerial capabilities
• Future jobs
• Understanding the market

How to Choose a Best Resume Format - The Employer’s Perspective

Employers get a plethora of resumes. What should they think when they look at your resume?

• To pick the correct ones in a short amount of time they skim through them, and in the process, keywords take their attention. Listing down the relevant skills matching the job description always aids in the selection of the resume.


• Resumes should describe the key responsibilities and performance of your previous jobs and accomplishments to attract a potential employer and enchant him to believe that the probability of your responsibility for the job is higher.


• The recruiters try to find out the embedded skills from your mentioned experience and qualification.


• As a student or a new applicant, you can insert your academic works, paid or unpaid internships, your personality depending on the job profile.


• As for managerial posts, your leadership skills, goal orientation, etc. can be mentioned. And as for your achievements, you should describe the process and testimonials to support that. You should always avoid writing an exaggerated and almost too perfect resume.

The Structure Of A Resume

You should put your best effort to persuade the executive search agency that you are an ideal candidate for the position. The five sections that are most important to acknowledge while composing the resume are:
I. Contact Information

a. Name: It is best to provide it with your present job title beneath. It is always good to use academic abbreviations before or after your name. Always put a similar name pattern through all the documents.</ul
b. The personal cell phone number which will be reachable most of the time
c. Email address: It should be a simple name and the primary contact source. It is wise to use a different email address than the one deployed at your current work.
d. Social Media Account: 82% of agencies use LinkedIn profiles to hire employees. The LinkedIn profile should have a professional approach. All other social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram should be cleaned up. Especially in industries like fashion, styling, and entertainment, Instagram plays as a criterion for selection. If you are being hired for content creation, editing jobs your blogs and websites are also given similar importance.

II. Profile: The resume profile describes your relevant skills, qualifications concisely in a paragraph. For a student hunting for jobs the profile should be objective, pointing out their key skills. They also can use pointed-style paragraphs to highlight their skills. For professionally experienced candidates writing the summary of previous achievements is important. In your profile, you should allow the recruiter to fully understand the closeness of your skills to the job profile and quantify your accomplishments.
III. Work Experience: It is a must to mention whether you are a novice or entry-level, mid-level, or senior-level candidate. For the entry-level or novice candidates pointing out internships, paid or unpaid jobs, projects would help them to stand out.
IV. Educational qualifications: Academic pursuit obviously illustrates your backgrounds. Names of the schools attended, graduation years, degrees availed, and academic achievements should be mentioned.
V. Skills: This section is the one that has to be precise yet relevant. 75% of employers feel a paucity of skills. Your skills may not completely but mostly match with the job description. For engineers and developers, the skills are the most important aspect, while for a creator the work experience and the skills matter the most.

Different Formats of Resumes to Choose from

I. Chronological or Reverse Chronological Resume (Highlights the work experience and shows professionalism, accepted by 90% of the employers) II. Functional Resume (Helpful for students, transferring candidates, highlights creativity, key skills, and budding potential) III. Combination Resume (creative with professionalism)
The non-conventional functional resume may seem like a good choice for first-timers but creating a combinational resume helps the most. It covers the career gap with skills and achievements. The work experience section should be listed to show the potential of your achievements towards professionalism. It highlights:

• Key career moments
• Transferable opportunities across the industry

Resume Building

A concise and clean resume always leaves a sense of aptitude. If you are a fresher just out of college or someone rebuilding your career, understanding the process of writing a versatile resume is like hitting the correct notes for a song. We can break down the entire process for you in the following steps:

• Understand and research the job positions suitable for your skills.
• Check out resume examples for the sector you want to work in.
• Select a preferred resume format.
• Choose a resume template matching the format
• Build an impressive resume profile.
• Add all the necessary sections, making it well-distributed.
• Highlight the skills matching with the job description.

Understanding the job profile and crafting an appealing resume can change your job-hunting process and find you the job suitable for you according to your skills and prolificity.