It’s no secret that first impressions matter. How would you like to impress the recruiter in the crucial first moments by beginning your resume with a dashing Header & Profile Summary? As we touched on in an earlier blog, these sections start off the resume. The recruiter is psychologically pushed to either decide to place your application in the green stack or the red from the very beginning, giving these sections immense weight. For this reason, the contents would do well to demonstrate:
- What your Brand can offer specifically to the company you applied for.
- Your consideration of the recruiter's time: Provide relevant, concise information that makes decision-making simpler for the recruiter.
Many applicants make simple errors and fail to make an impact with these two sections when it can easily be avoided. Adding irrelevant information multiple times in various sections causing redundancy, or elaborating on what they would like to be offered where they are expected to provide information on what they have to offer, are some of the common mistakes I’ve noticed over the years.
Below, I’ve elaborated on the DO's and the DON’T’S for these sections, along with many more. For now, let’s not worry ourselves about the styles, colors, formatting etc. of the resume. We’ll discuss the visual, verbal and formatting best practices in upcoming blogs in due time, once the core components have been mastered. But first, remember to craft these two to cover 20% of the resume page at the most. Being concise is a challenging art that is worth the efforts.
The Header Section
DO's: Make it sharp, professional, space-saving and on-point by including the following pointers and pro-tips:
1. In the front center, start with your name in a strong font style with relevant Post Graduate titles beside your name (if any)
- Pro Tip: Middle names, with their lengthiness and lack of need, are best left out.
2. Add your main e-mail address (ensure you check this email regularly).
- Avoid sharing unprofessional email handles such as name+rockstar@ or name+verysweet@ or name+kingoftheworld@ etc. Best not to have your resume touch these IDs with a barge pole ;) If you don't have an email address worth sharing professionally, no sweat- now is your time to create one. I suggest creating one with popular email services such as Gmail or Outlook. This not only helps with the perception on the resume but avoids having your email (with your resume) pushed to a recruiter's spam folder.
- Pro Tip: If you have an official or student email address, it’s best not to share these as both will expire if you truly intend to move on to a new job.
3. Contact Number: One direct phone number that’s in use, along with the area and country code is good to share (preferably your personal mobile).
- Pro Tip: Cover your basis by adding a concise and professional voicemail message if possible, for those unavoidable times when you are unable to answer the call.
4. LinkedIn URL: I strongly urge you create a LinkedIn profile if you don’t yet have one.
- Pro Tip: Use URL shorteners like bitly.com to save space while sharing a valid link to your online profile (You can even customize your short link to a relevant name. I strongly suggest you do this.)
5. Location: You may provide your City of residence.
- Pro Tip: Share your area code. Many a times, recruitment decisions can be based on the candidate’s place of residence, and recruitment agencies may require Pin/Zip codes in addition to the city (full addresses are usually irrelevant in today’s world).
With this, you have a smart, short and sweet start to the resume. The sample below shows what this would look like:
DON'Ts: Some Don'ts may have become evident to you from the above paragraph. They include:
1. Taking a significant chunk of space to write “Resume” or “CV” or “Curriculum Vitae” in flamboyant fonts is unnecessary. In most cases, they should have been given the context either by you or a middle-man that they are reviewing a resume.
2. Irrelevant details: Middle names and family details (such as parent names, occupations, passport numbers, full addresses, photos, multiple contact details, links to your social media profiles such as Facebook, twitter, date of birth, sex, religious beliefs etc.) Just don’t.
The Profile Summary Section
This is a short blurb about yourself that gives the recruiter a hint of what you specialize in/hope to focus on. The requirement for a profile summary has long been a debate and is still under contention to be honest. But given my own experience and research, I’ve decided to include it as a part of the core resume structure as it’s been a lethal elevator pitch for me and can be yours too if done right. In the end, if you don’t feel comfortable or don’t see it fitting well with the rest of your resume/experience/industry, feel free to skip it.
DO's:
1. Keep it concise: A general rule of thumb is to maintain it at 3 lines. A subtle change in font color and spacing can separate this section from the Header.
2. Highlight: Bolden the right content in the sentences for maximum impact. I personally love this, while my better half prefers not to intersperse text with bold font. Feel free to pick what you feel best :)
3. Customize: Show how you and your skills are useful to this specific employer. In the below snapshot, I’ve related my lines to the pre-sales analyst role I’m gunning for. The set of current skills, responsibilities, and expectations listed closely reflects or addresses potential responsibilities required for the role (review the job description closely to gain this information).
4. Focus: Highlight one relevant quality that you possess & engage your reader by elaborating on it. While 3 lines may not seem like a lot, great stories have been written in less.
5. Numbers: Demonstrate your result driven mindset by quantifying any of your skills with a combined, high-level number that denotes an achievement across your experiences or student-life (for instance for teamwork: Was in the 90th percentile or above in all my team assignments). It may not be the most obvious, but dig through and I’m sure you’ll find it. There are few ways to pop-out of the page at a recruiter, this being one of them. See sample #2 below for another example.
#1 Example for candidates with work experience:
#2 Example for student candidates:
DON'Ts:
1. While you are encouraged to mention the industry you are interested in and tie it with your skills. I suggest leaving out inward looking objectives that are narrow in nature as they may not only derail your chances if there’s a mismatch in interests, but they focus more on what you want and not what you can give.
2. Being ambiguous will not make for a good read. List of words and phrases like “hardworking person”, “never say die attitude” etc. do little to move the needle in your favor. Your experience and education will surely bring out your best skills not to worry!
3. Lengthy summaries: They are an oxymoron. Work with the 3-line rule and make it work.
4. Skills: Again, they only act as fillers, consider avoiding them.
Example Snapshot:
In the upcoming blog, we will tackle the next two sections that follow these in your resume, with the use of the S.T.A.R technique that we reviewed earlier, for an oh-so-big impact!
For this week's exercise: Compare the header & profile summary of your resume with the ones displayed on our blog. Note the differences and, as suggested in the blog, modify your resume to remove any unnecessary content and fill no more than 20% of your resume with the Header & Profile Summary sections.
Share the updated Header & Profile Summary with team@corpversity.xyz to get it evaluated with additional suggestions. You’ll be well on your way to having an impactful resume! For further services, please visit www.corporatereadytest.com/resume and get your complete resume scanned, all for a nominal price!
"There is always space for improvement, no matter how long you've been in your domain"
Manish N Gaba
(Pic Courtesy – Unsplash)
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