Top 7 Resume Improvement Tips - For even the best

I gave out Free Resume Tips to improve even the best CV all of July on Facebook.com/Randhir.Net. While it has been shared and liked by many friends & clients, I thought it would be great to share them in one place.

#R2J Tip 1: Resume is about what you achieved and what you can achieve and not about what you were supposed to do as per your job description. Check every line of your CV to make sure that this is what it is doing.

#R2J Tip 2: Tables look lame on your CV but are a powerful way of Formatting your content into multiple columns/sections. A cool way to get the best of both is to create the tables, but remove the borders.

#R2J Tip 3: Make sure your most important content is on Page 1 and at the Top of Page 1. A good way of doing this is to make sure your Professional Summary is your 2 minute pitch and the first 1-2 lines of the Summary is your 30 sec pitch. Add Skills, Achievements, a work summary

#R2J Tip 4: Have Certifications, Affiliated to some Industry Forum? Worked with Big Brand Names and are proud of it? Make sure you add the logos in appropriate locations on your CV so that they stand out in your CV.

#R2J Tip 5: Having a Social Profile (atleast on LinkedIn) is more important than ever before? I get 50 visitors on my LinkedIn profile every week and atleast 50% of them are prospective employers or consultants who are checking me out. My company does most of its sourcing on LinkedIn. Make sure you maintain it appropriately. Why is this a resume tip? If you have some great recos on LinkedIn, make sure you highlight that in your CV (Possibly in the Footer)

#R2J Tip 6: Want to switch industries? Want to take on a new role within the current company/industry? Freelance/Weekend projects & Internships in your area of interest and other areas too and a separate section that talks about all of your independent initiatives will help showcase you as a well-rounded individual and a go-getter.

#R2J Tip 7: Last in our Resume Improvement Tips, but definitely not the least. Matching the CV to the Job Description is very important. Matching could be as simple as moving bullet points around, highlighting keywords from JD or rewording parts of the CV to reflect relevant achievements that the Job is looking for. I typically start with a 1.5 page resume and cut down to 1page depending on the role I am applying to.

Do like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/randhir.net to keep getting tips such as these, special offers on our services and trainings and a lot lot more. Share this with your friends and family if you think they will benefit from our services or tips.

Also, go to the Photos section of our Fanpage to see Page#1 of my 1.5 page resume which has most of these tips incorporated. Feel free to learn from them and do it yourself. If you need my services, I am just a phone call away (+91.9945.254742). You can also book an appointment by going to our website and clicking on the meeting scheduler at the bottom right of the screen.

Certifications - Great Opportunity to add a few to your CV today ...

One typical feedback I give most of my clients (especially freshers and young professionals) who come to me for Resume Improvement - Try and Add one or more Certifications relevant to your Profile to your CV. This will help prove yourself to potential employers (especially when you don't have relevant experience in the field/tool). The obvious question is which ones, how much to pay for it and aren't there free certifications that are worth going for to prove ourselves. While most certifications worth the paper they are printed on cost Rs. 5000 upwards, over the next two days, you and I have an opportunity to get certified in a few relevant courses from Brainbench.

This is what I got in the e-mail from Brainbench today or within the next two days (when it is free). Go ahead and register on Brainbench and get certified. In fact, do your bit for your country and get India to the top of the leader-board (as on today - 3/7 as I post this, India is at No. 3 behind US and Ukraine in terms of Most Certified and No. 5 in terms of those certified with a 4+ score).

If possible, please let me know which ones you got certified as well.

Brainbench would like to invite you to participate in our online worldwide certification competition -Bench Games!

Throughout this event we are making ALL of our 600+ certification tests free -- YES FREE -- fromMarch 5, 2012 through March 9th, 2012.
Learn more about Bench Games: Click Here

The Bench Games leader board will be available starting March 6th. Find out which:

• Country has the most certified citizens
• Person received the highest score on a given test
• Country has the most MASTER level certified citizens

Support your country and get a chance to win free Brainbench annual subscriptions, all while enhancing your resume/CV and online transcript.

To take advantage of this great event, simply log-in to your Brainbench account during March 5th - 9th and start your testing!

The Brainbench Team

Top 7 Resume Blunders

Randhir.net launched the Resume Improvement Service in a big way on Resume2Jobs.net in August and followed it up with a Snapdeal.com offer of doing a Basic Critique and Feedback. This received an overwhelming response and kept our team busy all of this month. With this post, we are sharing the Top 7 Mistakes that we found across 80-90% of the CVs that we reviewed.

1. No Consistency: Stay consistent on the Font (Style & Size) you use, the spacing between paragraphs and lines, the tone and tenor of your voice across content and the amount of text you bold and what you bold. This makes your CV look professional & doesn't distract the reader away from the actual content. Pure hygiene factor, but important nonetheless.
2. Not doing a Spell-Check: How long does it take to open your resume in Word and fix the obvious spelling, grammar and punctuation errors? This is criminal and really says that you are not very quality-conscious and that you are satisfied with mediocrity.
3. Incorrect Tense and Incorrect Person Usage: Use past tense (except for maybe the present position) and use abbreviated third person (Randhir managed a team of  ... is replaced by Managed a team of ). More importantly, make sure that you stay consistent on this across your CV. Not following this can be very distracting to a Reader and makes you appear as someone who is not strong in English.
4. Missing (Contact) Information: I found CVs that had missing dates (on Jobs), missing role/title and one of the best (Missing Contact Information). Whatever you do, make sure that your Phone Number and E-mail are accurate and bold/clear at the Top of your CV (Preferably on every page  if you have a multi-page CV).
5. Not having a Professional Summary: CVs are looked at for a split second. If you can't give your 10 sec story at the top of your CV, you are losing a big opportunity for sure. This one is more relevant for someone with 5+ years of diverse experience. But for everyone, this is a way to highlight the most important things about you that you want the Hiring Manager to know.
6. Writing about your Roles and Responsibilities: 90% of the content of most CVs I reviewed could have been pulled out of a Job Description directly. This again is criminal because if you are like any other Java Developer or Sales Professional, you are not telling me why I should hire you and not the 100 other people that have applied for this same job.
7. Missing Specifics: This one's related to Point 6 above. Make sure you get very specific in what you did at your job and what you achieved/accomplished. e.g. Replace "made a business impact" by "saved US$ 3 MM" and "Appreciated by Client" by "Appreciated by multiple Senior Client Execs for the innovative solution that saved over US$ 1.5mn".

If you can make sure you avoid these, your CV is probably better than at least 50-70% of your competition depending on your industry/sector. This is what I saw from my experience over the past 3 months. Take a look at your current CV and let me know which of these are mistakes you have made. If you feel, there are others that belong here, please do post your feedback/comments either in the comments section below or on our Facebook Page.

Bio: Randhir Hebbar is a seasoned Resume Development Expert (Website: Resume2Jobs.net) and Hiring Manager with 10 years of experience in IT/ITES/Analytics Consulting. For any of your resume development needs, he can be reached at cv2randhir@gmail.com or on the phone at +91.9945.254742. We are also on Facebook (here and here) and on LinkedIN.