Congrats, you’re a degree holder now! But there seems to be no queue of Top-100 Forbes companies sending you their job offers. Let’s help them to know you better with a nice resume. Here are some tips from professional HR managers that will assist you in your career.

1. Check out free templates

A resume should contain some obligatory sectors like education, experience, skills, and contacts, and you need all of them to be filled in. Look through some common resume templates and don’t miss anything. If you don’t have valuable experience yet, write more about your extra-curricular activities in college. Indicate the topic of your master’s or bachelor’s paper if it has something to do with the job position you’re applying for.

Blog illustration: Design Hiring by Renee Fleck

2. Write personalized cover letters

It can be difficult to amend your resume or CV for each company you apply, but you should at least write personalized cover letters indicating why exactly you match for the position. If writing is not your strong point, get some help from professionals to write a personal statement, an application, or a cover letter for you. This website has years of experience in custom writing and will emphasize your skills in the most appealing way.

3. Make your resume ATS-friendly

A good idea is to make a ATS friendly resume. ATS stands for applicant tracking system and today many large and medium corporations use it to optimize the hiring process. This means that your resume will be first scanned by the AI bot and only then it will get to the HR manager. Some research states that 75% of resumes sent to big companies are not even seen by people as they are blocked by the ATS.

To increase your chances to pass the system, never put important information like your name or the position you’re applying for in the header or footer of your document. Another tip is to use keywords inside your resume. This means, if you’re applying for a position of a JavaScript developer, there should be words like “software” and “development” in your document, as well as the names of several frameworks. Look through the texts of the vacancies you like to see what words are commonly used there and try to use them in your resume.

4. Tell more about yourself

TBBT gives a good example of how some information that isn’t directly related to the job position can actually be of importance. When Mayim Bialik had an interview for the role of Any, she sent a resume to the crew where she stated that she was a PhD in Neuroscience in the Miscellaneous section. Although she is a great actress, exactly this detail gave her a ticket to the film set and the paycheck for $450.000 per episode in the last seasons.

Personal Portfolio, CV & Resume Template by SabbirMc

There is no need to give all the details about your uncommon hobbies in the resume, but you can at least mention them to increase your chances of receiving a call.

5. Choose the right format

According to professional HR managers, the best format for your resume is a .doc as it is commonly used over the world. Remember that your resume is an informative official document and there should be no excessive styles or fonts in it. You should also avoid tables and graphics as some ATS can’t read them and will block your resume halfway to the recruiter.

There is a discussion about whether you should add your photo to the resume or not and there is no single answer to this question. The only recommendation we can give is, if you decide to add your photo or links to your profiles in the social media to your CV, they should look respectful and correspond to the level of job position you’re about to take.