Cracking a job interview is not just about scoring well at the interview. The interviewees start judging you the moment you hand them over your resume. It can’t be stressed enough how important of a role your resume plays when you are applying for a job. Sometimes, if the recruiters do not find what they are looking for in a resume, they don’t even bother to schedule an interview and filter the candidates out just like that. Hence it must be established by now that the key to cracking a job interview is to have an attractive resume. In this article, let’s find out how you can do that.
Qualities of an attractive resume
Let’s see what it is meant by an “attractive” resume. When looking for suitable employees, the recruiters are short on time and they only skim your resume instead of reading it thoroughly. An attractive resume is one that has been drafted in such a way that it is easy for anyone to skim through it in the minimum time possible and yet grasp the crucial details in that document. In order to achieve that you should pay attention to these details:
- The resume should not be detailed and in a paragraph style.
- Be precise and add bullet points as much as possible.
- Highlight the words that might interest the recruiter using font styling techniques.
- Be extra careful with the layout and the formatting of the document. These are things that make an everlasting impression.
Resume as a document
Since these days, it is all about digital documents, resumes are also preferred as documents rather than sheets of paper. The most frequently used document format for creating and editing resumes is PDF. The reason why it is so is that it is the easiest to perform professional editing in PDFs. For digital resumes, it is not only important to pay attention to the creative process but also the editing. You’d be amused to know how some people got their dream job just because of some last changes they did to their resumes. So, editing the resume is something that cannot be neglected.
Editing a resume
Let us see in detail what it is that needs to be paid attention to while editing a PDF. If you have a professional PDF editor like WPS office for family, that would literally add a cherry on top of the cake.
Layout and Formatting
The layout formatting of a resume is something that a lot of people neglect thinking it is not really important. We know it is the content of the resume that the recruiter is interested in, yet we need to pay attention to the layout and the formatting of our resume since that is what makes a document legible or illegible. The formatting of the document should be such that it is easy for the reader to skim through the whole thing and grasp the most important details in as less time as possible. It is the formatting of the document that will decide the amount of time the reader wants to grant on your resume. The more time the recruiter pays to your resume, the more the chances of you getting selected.
Adding Style
This is again something that is turned a blind eye towards. People think it is not important to make the resume a “good-looking” one while it surely is. The colors and the styles that you choose must give an authentic look to your resume without compromising professionalism. If you are applying for a very formal position try to be very subtle with the choice of your colors and font styles.
Save the document
We’d always suggest you save the resume as a PDF. But we’d also suggest you always check what the recruiter wants before sending in your resume. Sometimes, the recruiters specify specifically what kind of document format they want and you should save the document accordingly.