The first step in any application is always the resume screening stage. For many job seekers, this single sheet of paper is what stands between them and their dream job. Yet, despite having tons of experience and complementary skills, many still cannot get to the first onsite interview. What gives?
Crafting the Resume
The first hurdle in any job application is having a resume that gets you past the screening stage. Many people fail here with poor formatting, inaccurate descriptions, and poor all-around resume writing execution. This guide will teach you how to format and structure your content to create an all-star resume.
In general, a resume has two main parts: the structure and the content. We will first look at how to best structure your resume before explaining how to ace content writing.
1. Structure and Naming Conventions
How you structure your resume will vastly affect how easily recruiters can comprehend and sieve out information. Recruiters receive hundreds of resumes every day and only spend about 7 seconds to skim through each. Cluttered resumes hindered recruiters’ ability to understand. On the other hand, simple resumes with clear sections and header titles managed to capture their attention, especially those with bold headings and bullet points, organised by F-pattern reading tendencies.
So, throw away any fanciful gimmicks (unless you are a UI/UX designer) and stick to the basics.
Resume Format
The first step in crafting your resume is choosing a format. In general, there are three main types of recommended resume formats:
Reverse-chronological Resume Format: This is the most popular resume format and is used by people with prior relevant working experience. Relevant experiences are listed from the most recent, then moving backwards in time.
Functional Resume Format: This is used mainly by people with little or no working experience, namely fresh graduates and students. This is also sometimes used by people looking for a career change, whereby their prior experiences may not be as relevant to the job they’re applying for. Skills are prioritised and listed at the top of the resume.
Combination Resume Format: This is a hybrid resume that combines both the reverse-chronological resume and the functional resume. It places equal emphasis on both skills and working experience. It is helpful for jobs that require both experience and niche skillsets.
We recommend either the reverse-chronological or combination resume format unless you lack relevant working experience.
Here are some considerations when planning the structure of your resume:
Keep your resume to 1 page: Unless you have more than ten years of experience (in which case 2 pages might be warranted), 1 page is ideal – unless you are writing a CV (Curriculum Vitae), in which case 2 to 3 pages are justified.
Save your resume as a PDF: There have been many instances of formatting inconsistencies when saving and opening a Word document. The same resume may look completely different on your recruiter’s computer. You can never go wrong with a PDF document.
Use an easy-to-read font: Stick to standard fonts like Arial and Helvetica or Roboto if you feel more adventurous. Choose fonts with high readability and ensure that they are consistent throughout your resume.
Standardise your font sizes: Use 14 – 16 pt. for headers and 10-12 pt. for regular text. While a smaller size may allow you to squeeze in more information, it will compromise the readability of your resume.
With that done and dusted, we are ready to move on to the next part of building your resume – the content.
2. Resume Content
Now that you’ve nailed the overall structure of your resume, it’s time to ensure that content scores. The content highlighted in your resume is vital to recruiters, and ensuring you have the skills and experience they are looking for is the key.
Here are some important sections a resume may contain:
Personal Information and Contact Details
Work Experience
Education
Skills
Optional Sections: Projects, Awards, Publications, Volunteer Work, Hobbies, Languages
The sections listed here are vital to your resume, and missing even just one of them will affect your resume significantly. Now, let’s look at each section to see how to craft them best.
Personal Information and Contact Details Section
Personal information sections should include:
First and last name
Phone Number (Personal)
Email (Professional sounding)
This information is vital for recruiters to reach out to you, so ensure that everything is up-to-date and correct.
Other supplementary information you can consider including:
LinkedIn: This is an excellent platform for recruiters to learn more about you.
Personal Website: If you are a web developer, photographer, or similar, a website allows you to add a visual element to display your past works and skills.
GitHub: This is commonly used as a portfolio for software projects. It also supports portfolio websites through GitHub Pages.
Behance/Dribbble/Coroflot: These are popular websites for UI/UX Designers to list their works and portfolios.
The above information is not crucial but is excellent at value-adding to your resume as it allows you to share your past works and aids recruiters in better understanding your skills and capabilities. However, make sure only to include relevant information and not “spammy” links. For example, if your GitHub is empty, avoid adding it to your resume.
You should NOT include:
Your photo: While people strive for neutrality, having a photo may cause inherent biases in the recruiter process, so be sure to avoid it.
Additional emails and phone numbers: You only need one.
References/ Referrals: Any references can be included as a separate document, if at all. For example, you may attach a recommendation letter from your previous employer separately.
Anything other than those listed above
Example of Personal Information Section:
Resume Summary (About Me) Section
Don’t bother with an about section. While many advocates for such, surveys have shown that recruiters do not care to read it. Such space could have been used to better elaborate on your past experiences or relevant projects.
Unless you have unique circumstances, we strongly advise against including this section.
Work Experience Section
The most important part of your resume is the work experience section, which should include your past roles and responsibilities. This section is where the recruiter looks for relevant positions and skills for the job.
Standard information includes:
Job Title: This tells the recruiter whether you have relevant working experience.
Company Name (and Location): In general, if you are living in a small country like Singapore, there is no need to specify your location. Otherwise, “City, State” is generally sufficient.
Responsibilities: This makes up the crux of your experience. Interviewers look out for technical skills and achievements accomplished during your job.
Years Employed: Only the month and year should be listed (e.g. 07/2020 – 04/2024).
When structuring your content within each experience, make sure to:
Mention Technical Tools Used: Recruiters look out for relevant technical skills in your past work experiences. For example, if the recruiter is looking for a Python programmer, having listed prior experience with Python is huge. Even if they are not entirely relevant, this gives the recruiter a better idea of your skills. However, try to tailor your skills to the job. For example, knowing JavaScript is useless to a chemical engineer.
Emphasise Quantitative Data: Using quantitative data is much better than general statements about your job. For example, “Optimised existing business processes, leading to a 30% decrease in overhead costs and over 5 million in yearly savings” read far better than “Managed and improved business processes for the company”.
Qualitative Aspects Matter Too: If you were actively involved in managing teams and multiple people, list them too. Soft skills like interpersonal communication are highly valued in the workplace.
Example of Work Experience:
In charge of demand planning and forecasting for the APAC region, overseeing China, Korea, and Japan
Built insights-based visualisation dashboards with Tableau for respective country’s sales leadership team
Developed advanced time-series forecasting models, which reduced forecasting errors by 60%, saving over USD 7 million in annual inventory and overhead costs.
Education Section
This is where you should list down your past education in reverse-chronological order. In general, only university degrees should be listed if applicable. Otherwise, you may choose to include your high school information.
Additionally, you can consider adding any academic excellence awards (such as Dean’s List) or achievements (such as publications) in this section.
Things to include in the education section:
Course Name: You can opt for the full or abbreviated form; both will work fine. E.g. Bachelor of Science in Business Administration/ B.S. in Business Administration
University Name: Your university’s name.
GPA/ Honours: You should only list this if you have a decent GPA (Cum Laude/ Second Upper Class Honours/ Honours with Distinction/ or their equivalent or above). Otherwise, you may choose to leave this section blank.
Academic Achievements: Dean’s list, journal publications, relevant coursework, etc.
Years Attended: Only the month and year should be listed (e.g. 07/2020 – 04/2024).
Example of Education Section:
Course Name: Bachelor of Science in Business Administration
University Name: National University of Singapore
GPA/ Honours: Summa Cum Laude (3.86 out of 4.0)
Academic Achievements: Deans List, 2021 & 2022
Years Attended: 07/2019 – 05/2023
Skills
The skills section is another important section in your resume, especially for jobs that require niche skillsets. There are generally two types of skills – soft skills and hard skills.
Soft skills refer to personal attributes that affect how you work. They range across interpersonal communication, emotional intelligence, cooperative attitudes, active listening, and many more.
Hard skills are measurable technical or specific abilities, such as coding proficiency and Microsoft Office skills. This reflects how well you can perform a particular technical task within the job.
In general, you may split your skills into these two categories. Hard skills may be further broken down into categories for certain roles. For example, ‘programming languages, frameworks, and other tools. There is no hard rule to structuring your skills headers. Additionally, some people may choose to omit soft skills in their resumes.
This is the most flexible section of a resume. Feel free to change it up to suit your circumstances!
Example of Skills Section:
Hard Skills: Python, R, Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS
Soft Skills: Interpersonal communication, Teamwork, Problem-solving
Other Sections
We’ve covered all the essential sections to include in your resume. The addition of the below-mentioned sections should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
You may choose to include other optional sections, such as:
Projects: Great to furnish your resume, especially if you do not have much working experience. This can help showcase specific skills to the recruiter.
Awards: If you have outstanding accolades, feel free to list them.
Publications: Especially impressive and valuable for research-related and technical roles.
Volunteer Work: This may be applicable in some scenarios but could be combined with hobbies.
Hobbies: A great way to showcase your interests and allows you to build a connection with your recruiter/interviewer.
Languages: Useful for specific jobs that require other languages.
You may not want to create individual headers for each section, especially if they span only a few lines. Consider combining multiple sections if they apply to you.
ATS-Friendly Resumes
Before we wrap things up, ensure that your resume is ATS-friendly and ranks well should the company use an Application Tracking System (ATS).
An ATS is a type of software that many companies use to automate the resume screening process. This system parses through resumes, extracts certain keywords, and then ranks them accordingly. ATS are very useful to companies as it helps cut down time and resources needed for recruiters and simplify the entire vetting process.
There are two issues with ATS that job seekers struggle with:
Word Parsing: Each ATS has a standardised format for parsing data. Suppose you name your work experience “Company & Relevant Experiences”. In that case, it may not be able to identify this section, leading to an automatic rejection.
Here are some general naming conventions for sections in a resume: Work Experience, Education, Skills, Awards, Interests, and Hobbies – all of which we have previously covered. Note that your resume does not have to contain all listed sections. However, avoid using fanciful words as section headers – they don’t work.
Requirement Matching: An ATS will parse through your resume and match skills listed against their basic list of requirements. Any missing skills ultimately lead to a lower resume ranking score, and missing a basic required skill constitutes automatic rejection.
Some ATS will determine and rank your resume based on the frequency of a particular term. In contrast, others do not consider frequency and only occurrence. When it comes to scoring highly on an ATS, a good practice is to reiterate essential skills 2 – 3 times throughout. Avoid buzzwords such as “best-in-class” and “bottom-line oriented” and focus on proper keywords.
Key Takeaways
Let’s rehash some important takeaways that we’ve mentioned previously.
Use a Professional Sounding Email: A proper email name exhibits professionalism and gives a good impression. No one wants to see an email from darklord99@hotmail.com or crazythecool@aol.com. Good prefixes include firstname.lastname, lastname.firstname, firstnameinitiallastname, or some variation of the above.
Don’t Waste Space on an About Section: No recruiters bother to read it. The space could be used more effectively, such as elaborating on your job experiences.
Omit Addresses: Generally, if you live in a small country like Singapore, you do not need to specify your location. Otherwise, “City, State” is generally sufficient.
1-Page Long Resumes: They rule!
Save your Resume as a PDF document: Word can result in some formatting errors.
A One-Liner About your Hobbies and Interests is A-OK: Although it contradicts the previous point, a short collection of your interests humanises you and gives the recruiter a way to connect with you.
Congratulations on making it this far! If you’ve followed the steps listed, chances are you’ve aced the resume screening stage. But that’s just the first hurdle in a gruelling hiring process. There are still many behavioural and technical rounds to pass. Learn how to master common behavioural questions in job interviews for your upcoming interview.
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