HOW TO MAKE A GOOD RESUME: 11 ESSENTIAL TIPS - JOB - 2024

This document collects your training and professional profile with the aim that you can be considered as a candidate to develop the jobs that best match your profile.

Carrying out a professional CV (resume in English) and modern in a suitable way, determines to a large extent to get the position you want; conveys the first impression you give to the person responsible for hiring.

It is the first information that a company or a recruitment department will know about you. Therefore, it is essential that you make it in the best possible way and that you spend time creating an attractive one.

11 Steps to Make a Good Resume

1-Indicate your name and surname clearly and visually

You must write your name and two surnames in the header of the document, as a title. You can highlight this section with a larger font size or by using bold type.

In this way, the person who receives your CV for the first time will more easily remember your name and will differentiate you in a more agile way among other candidates who are not so familiar.

2-Provide your personal and contact information (not marital status)

Your personal and contact information must be placed after your name and surname, since they are also of vital importance in a curriculum vitae.

They provide very relevant information, such as your location and the most appropriate way to contact you to ask the first questions. These data must collect the following:

Telephone contact

Indicate a number where you are usually available, such as your personal mobile. Avoid landline numbers where you may not be available at certain times or where someone other than you can answer.

Email address

It must be easy to remember and refer to your name. For example, use your name and first surname all together and in lowercase, thus reinforcing, as in the first section, that the interviewer remembers your name and you facilitate contact.

Avoid using difficult or inappropriate words, periods, dashes, slashes or other symbols that make it difficult for the person who wants to contact you to write your address when sending you an email.

If the address is difficult to remember or type and is entered into the computer with an error, the message will never reach you and you could be missing important information, as well as placement opportunities.

Location

In many selection processes it is relevant to know what your locality is. Larger companies have different delegations spread throughout the territory, and in this way they can refer your CV to the one closest to your current residence.

In your location, it is not necessary to indicate your full address since this is a very personal information. It is usually enough to indicate the province and town in which you reside.

Other personal data

In principle, you do not need to provide more information in this section. The information that refers to the marital status or the number of children is not necessary, you can include it if you wish, but these data cannot be decisive for any selection process.

3-Choose a suitable photo

The fact of including a photo in your curriculum vitae, makes it more personal and close to the person who receives it. It is usually included at the top of the document, along with your name and personal information, and is of a moderate size. As for what type of photo to include there are several recommendations:

• Current: renew the photo of your CV at least every year or every time you make an important change in your look, such as changing your hair color.
• Appropriate: In most work settings the appropriate photo for a resume is a passport photo, a forehead close-up covering the face and shoulders. In more specific sectors such as modeling or fitness, larger photos may be necessary, but they usually indicate this when requesting your CV. Other recommendations when taking your photo for your resume are: use neutral clothing colors, do not abuse makeup, avoid clothes that are too summer or excessively warm and, finally, show your most natural smile.
• In color: photos in black and white or copied repeatedly, may end up distorted or blurred. A color photo will bring more clarity to your image and the whole of your CV will be seen more cleanly.

4-Training profile and work trajectory: Use a chronological order and indicate dates

The body of your resume will be made up of your educational background and professional experience. To develop this section, you can follow several general recommendations and rules:

• Order of presentation: in more junior profiles, the training is usually presented first and then the work experience. On the contrary, in profiles with a longer professional career, experience is indicated first and then the training profile available.
• Chronological order: both your training profile and your work history must follow an order that refers to the dates on which each event occurred. The most recent experiences or training are indicated first, that is, at the top of the document, progressively descending to the oldest date.
• Indicate the dates: it is important that you justify the chronological order of the events by indicating the exact dates, with months and years. This exercise can be of great help, since during personal interviews the candidate is asked for these dates, and it can be difficult to remember exactly past dates.

5-Use bold to highlight titles, headings or other data

It is advisable to use bold type to visually separate some data from others and organize the presentation of the information. You can use it to highlight all the positions you have held and present the functions carried out in normal letters.

In this way, it is easier to be able to make a quick reading of your professional experience, jumping from bold to bold, or a deeper reading of the full text, combining bold and not bold.

Avoid using underlines, changes in font size or other elements that can tire the eyes of the person reading your CV.

6-Summarize the information: No more than a page or two

A resume should be short and succinct. Its objective is to generate in the interviewer a desire to get to know you more as a professional and want to have a personal interview with you to expand the information about it.

If you do not synthesize the information in your CV correctly, the reading of it can be too dense and reduce the intention to meet personally with you for fear of an interview that is too heavy.

For this reason, the general recommendation is not to use more than a page or two in the writing of your curriculum vitae, using only the second page in the case of profiles with a broad professional career.

7-Indicate your achievements

It is interesting to be able to highlight your greatest achievements on your CV. An increase in the sales or profits of the company, the development of a strategy that meant success for the company in which you collaborated or the resolution of a conflict or important problem, can be examples of achievements that you have achieved throughout your experience labor.

You can indicate your greatest achievement in each of your experiences, or dedicate a small section after them, highlighting the two or three most important achievements of your entire professional career.

8-Highlight your differential points

It is likely that you have knowledge or skills that differentiate you from other candidates, marking a positive differential point in your candidacy. Examples of knowledge or skills that you can highlight on your resume can be the following:

• Knowledge of Languages: if you have a good level or command of other languages, indicate it in your CV, especially if they may be of special interest for the development of the vacancy for which you are offering yourself as a candidate.
• Computer skills: indicate the computer programs that during your training or experience you have had to use and master with ease.
• Personal skills: each person has a series of skills and competencies more developed than others. All of them differentiate you as a professional. You can highlight the most important ones in your curriculum vitae. Possible examples of them can be: responsibility, organization, customer orientation, adaptability, flexibility, analytical capacity, commitment to the company, listening skills, work skills, negotiating skills, leadership, persistence, etc.

9-Review the spelling, do not make mistakes

Spelling mistakes in a CV cause the feeling of little attention to detail and little care for the image on the part of the candidate who thus presents his resume.

Check the spelling of your CV carefully before submitting it for a job offer or sending it to a company. In case you have doubts about the writing of a word, look it up in a dictionary or on the internet and make sure it is correctly on your resume.

In addition, before its dissemination, you can share your CV with a family member or close friend so that they can review it and comment on their impressions in this regard, not only in spelling, but also in terms of the format or the degree of difficulty in understanding it.

In this way you can correct it, detect errors that you had not noticed, include improvements and adapt it before it is sent.

10-Adapt it to every occasion

Depending on what type of company or vacancy you want to send your curriculum vitae to, it is recommended that you adapt it to the characteristics of the same.

You can enhance or highlight both data and information that are especially interesting on each occasion of sending your application, such as:

• Specific functions that you have developed similar to those of the position you are applying for.
• Languages ​​that are commonly used in the hiring company, or fundamental for the development of the position to which one is chosen, to maintain

  commercial relations with other countries.

• Computer or management tools that you master and are required on that occasion.
• Knowledge of additional value for the vacancy that you can contribute thanks to your training or experience.
• Personal characteristics necessary for the proper development of the position.

11-Do not lie!

On many occasions it is easy to fall into the temptation of wanting to give the best possible image of yourself and resort to deception or falsification of the information you include in your CV. Even small deviations from reality can be very dangerous.

The most common lies in a CV tend to refer to a level of languages ​​that is not reached, specific knowledge that the candidate has rarely put into practice, indicate a number of years of experience greater than that available or exaggerate the responsibility that is has had in previous positions.

Interviewers are prepared to detect these types of lies in a CV. In addition, if you want to evaluate your command of a language or other specific knowledge as it is essential for the development of the position, the selection process will include an evaluation and assessment phase.

If you have lied about your level of knowledge, it is likely that you will have an embarrassing moment trying to succeed in the level test and that the lie was not worth it.

The best way to present an application with honesty, sincerity and transparency when providing your information. If you are the ideal candidate for the position and you demonstrate your desire and ability to develop the position in the best possible way, the company will be interested in having you and training you in the knowledge or languages ​​you need in your new position.