A resume, though not a mandatory document for many universities, gives you an opportunity to showcase your courses, abilities, work experience, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, enabling you to highlight your accomplishments effectively in a chronological order. Skill Maestro lists some ‘Must-Remember’ things while you draft your resume. Of course, you don’t want to be doing clumsy errors!
1. Coherent Structure
The structure of your resume must be coherent and cogent. Plenty of templates are available online and you may download them. Be sure the template you choose adheres to this format.
i Ordinary Details -You must list your name, e-mail ID, contact details and current designation on the top right/left hand side of the header.
ii Educational Details - Start with your educational details. It’s a good idea to form a table listing your important educational landmarks with the following columns- ‘education’ (matriculation, +2 and college years), ‘GPA/score’, Year of Passing and ‘university/school’. It gives a concise overview of your educational details.
iii Work Experience - Post your educational details, list your work/internship experience with the organization name and the profile you worked on as sub-headings and the work you did in concise bullet points. Mention the year beside each subheading and progress in a chronological manner, starting with the latest experience.
iv Academic Achievements - List your academic achievements, if any.
v Co-curricular / Extra-curricular Achievements - List your Co-curricular/Extra curricular achievements, if any.
vi Strengths and Weaknesses - List not more than three strengths and weakness each and be very apt while doing so. Do not brag unnecessarily.
2. Do not Brag!
While it is important that you mention your achievements to underscore your personality traits, it is equally important that you do not use pompous adjectives for yourself while listing your achievements. Avoid using self-praising adjectives like ‘hardworking’, ‘focused’, ‘creative’ etc while listing your achievements. The only time these adjectives should show up is while you list your personal strengths, which should not exceed any more than three adjectives that aptly describe you. Listing pompous adjectives for your own self can portray a negative quality of ‘complacency’ in the eyes of the committee scrutinizing your application.
3. Avoid Ornate Language
The language you use in your resume has to be strictly formal (Business English) and you must refrain from using flowery language. You are writing your resume, not an article, or essay. Be extremely pithy in your language and avoid using verbose sentences.
4. Take care of the Length
The ideal length of a resume is one page. Remember, the purpose of a resume is to summarize your career history. Avoid using superfluous details like say personal information or anything else that may not be relevant to the scrutiny of your application. A good resume is concise and to the point. While it’s not an extremely big deal if your resume exceeds one page, it certainly should not exceed two pages in any case.
5. Right Formatting
The way your resume is formatted speaks volumes of your organizing abilities. Stick to a standard font (either Times New Roman or Arial) with the font size of 12. You may consider decreasing the font size to 10 in case you want to accommodate more content in fewer pages, but, be sure to give correct spacing, margins and alignment so that it looks neat and clear and not clumsy and illegible. You must bold face or italicize certain important areas where you wish to emphasize. For example, say you bagged a gold medal in some competition. You must bold face ‘Gold Medal’ in this case. It makes the reader not to lose interest while reading your resume.
6. Grammar
Ensure the correct use of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Never use personal pronouns like ‘I’, ‘We’ or ‘You’. A lot of people have a proclivity to use ‘I’ in their resumes. Never do that. For example, instead of writing ‘I managed a team of 20 people’, you should write the bullet point as ‘Managed a team of 20 people’ under the concerned sub-heading.
7. Never Lie!
Never include any false/deceptive/misleading information in your resume. This is the gravest mistake you could make. A candidate giving false information seldom realizes that background and reference checks can reveal the truth that he/she is hiding. It is not just unethical, but also unlawful. It’s not surprising that many people have been caught lying in their resumes and lawful action has been taken against them, which involves punishments and penalties.
Since resume is not a mandatory document, you must ensure to include all the important facts in your LORs and SOPs. However, a resume is an additional furnishing document, and may increase your prospects of admission. Hope, we made your lives simpler!
2. Do not Brag!
While it is important that you mention your achievements to underscore your personality traits, it is equally important that you do not use pompous adjectives for yourself while listing your achievements. Avoid using self-praising adjectives like ‘hardworking’, ‘focused’, ‘creative’ etc while listing your achievements. The only time these adjectives should show up is while you list your personal strengths, which should not exceed any more than three adjectives that aptly describe you. Listing pompous adjectives for your own self can portray a negative quality of ‘complacency’ in the eyes of the committee scrutinizing your application.
3. Avoid Ornate Language
The language you use in your resume has to be strictly formal (Business English) and you must refrain from using flowery language. You are writing your resume, not an article, or essay. Be extremely pithy in your language and avoid using verbose sentences.
4. Take care of the Length
The ideal length of a resume is one page. Remember, the purpose of a resume is to summarize your career history. Avoid using superfluous details like say personal information or anything else that may not be relevant to the scrutiny of your application. A good resume is concise and to the point. While it’s not an extremely big deal if your resume exceeds one page, it certainly should not exceed two pages in any case.
5. Right Formatting
The way your resume is formatted speaks volumes of your organizing abilities. Stick to a standard font (either Times New Roman or Arial) with the font size of 12. You may consider decreasing the font size to 10 in case you want to accommodate more content in fewer pages, but, be sure to give correct spacing, margins and alignment so that it looks neat and clear and not clumsy and illegible. You must bold face or italicize certain important areas where you wish to emphasize. For example, say you bagged a gold medal in some competition. You must bold face ‘Gold Medal’ in this case. It makes the reader not to lose interest while reading your resume.
6. Grammar
Ensure the correct use of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Never use personal pronouns like ‘I’, ‘We’ or ‘You’. A lot of people have a proclivity to use ‘I’ in their resumes. Never do that. For example, instead of writing ‘I managed a team of 20 people’, you should write the bullet point as ‘Managed a team of 20 people’ under the concerned sub-heading.
7. Never Lie!
Never include any false/deceptive/misleading information in your resume. This is the gravest mistake you could make. A candidate giving false information seldom realizes that background and reference checks can reveal the truth that he/she is hiding. It is not just unethical, but also unlawful. It’s not surprising that many people have been caught lying in their resumes and lawful action has been taken against them, which involves punishments and penalties.
Since resume is not a mandatory document, you must ensure to include all the important facts in your LORs and SOPs. However, a resume is an additional furnishing document, and may increase your prospects of admission. Hope, we made your lives simpler!
We, at Skill Maestro painstakingly work hard to put all the relevant details in professional way (US one-page format) for your US graduate school applications. Call us at 9827777288 or 8085333331 to know more about our Admission Consulting process.
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At Skill Maestro, We guide prospective students about the entire application process as well as suitable universities as per their profile/test scores. We have consulted dozens of prospective students for MIS across the globe. We have a physical presence in Indore where we also help students prepare for GRE, GMAT & SAT
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