How to Build a Winning Resume ?
A winning resume is readable, concise, and well-structured that emphasizes your accomplishments. It must be written in simple language with consistent font, spacing, capitalization for emphasis, and reverse chronological order (i.e., the latest achievements should be stated first).
The standard formats for a B-School resume include:
-Header (stating your contact information)
-A brief summary of your interests and reason for opting for the course
-Education
-Experience
-Additional experience and skills
Here are a few points to keep in mind while framing your winning resume.
Writing an elaborate Education Section
- List your educational experience in a way that is readable and relevant.
- This includes listing the full name of the school, college, university/institute, and the name of the degree along with the year of completion.
- You may also list the exchange programs, certifications, and courses you completed from online platforms.
- List the awards, recognitions, and scholarships during your educational journey as well.
Listing your Experiences
- List each of the positions that you have held, paid or unpaid, and give a detailed aspect of your roles and responsibilities.
- Include the name of the company/organization where you worked at.
- Quantify your experiences. For example, list the awards, recognition, leading projects, etc in your resume, with concrete examples. Do not use vague language, such as, ‘made a considerable value addition to the company.’ Rather, write ‘increased quarter profits by 10%.’
- Using action verbs to highlight your initiatives and input is also highly impactful, for example, using ‘collaborated’ instead of ‘assisted.’
Highlight your skills through Other Activities and Leadership Roles
- This section is like the experience section and has great potential to highlight your skill set if you are a recent graduate and have not been in the workforce for long.
- Highlight your leadership roles, to give a sense of your versatility to the reader. This includes listing all the extramural engagements, community service, student organizations that you worked with, etc that are relevant in a professional setting.
- It is important to highlight your skill set, as it is an indicator of your productive capacities.
- The relevant information must be stated in a concise format, and this enables the employer to evaluate specific points in your interview.
Market your Skills
- Market your additional skills, such as technical skills, transferable skills (soft skills), language proficiency, etc.
- Emphasize the skills that you have acquired from your professional experience, extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, internships, or projects.
- Your skills must highlight your competency, goals that you have achieved as well as the significant quantitative and qualitative outcomes of your work.
Format
- A well-formatted resume is readable as well as easy on the eyes. Usually, a resume must be confined to one page or two pages for more experienced people.
- Do not write a five-page resume written in the 7-point font! Make sure to use your font between 10-12.
- Do not use difficult font styles that are hard to decipher. Stick to simpler and professional-looking fonts.
- Use adequate spacing and margins. Around 1 unit on the top and bottom is considered the standard norm.
- Include your detailed contact information as well.
Your resume must be fact-based and clearly articulate your achievements.
Download Sample Format
(This is just sample and its not mandatory to use this format)
