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INTRODUCTION

As part of this and some upcoming blogs, I intend to help the fresh college grads or new joiners from any industry, gain some perspective of how the real world works.

This is part 5 of resume building ( beautify ). We will clean and sharpen our resume for the presentation.

Disclaimer

Neither do I claim to be an expert in the field of resume building ( if there is indeed such a field ), nor have I consulted many HRs or recruiters.

I have appeared in and have conducted multiple interviews. The following information is based on my own experiences, knowledge gained from the experiences of my juniors, peers and mentors, and some brainstorming sessions with friends.

Chutzpah

If I were being honest to myself, I’ll have to admit that I am not skilled at designing and high presentation.

There are tons of beautiful ‘ready to use’ templates available online for anyone looking. But unfortunately what ends up happening is …. The template with the content will result in many awkward resumes 😐

The head HR of an organization once said to me, something like : Deep, I like the way you have presented your skills. You know, I like people with some chutzpah. ( truth be told .. I was flattered 🙂 )

The word ‘chutzpah’ is spelled ‘hutzpaa’ and means : a lot of self-confidence, gall, nerve etc. I guess what she intended to point out was that I did NOT follow the usual presentation norm.

So, how did someone without much designing skills end up getting a compliment ( and some more later ) ?

While editing my resume, not having much designing skills, I started by asking myself some basic questions like:

–How would my resume stand out in the crowd ?

–How can I make my resume NOT boring ?

–What can look interesting AND presentable?

With my answers and with ideas that seemed logical and presentable, I came up with my resume !

Thinking out loud

This is me, thinking out loud …

So, what could make my resume interesting ?

–First, let me use an easy to read text size. Hmm, at least a 10… no less; maybe 11, but we’ll see whether the total pages go above 4.

Also, I am not gonna use too many fonts … max 2 font types for me.

–Bold and underline … sure. But you know what … bold and underline are too boring!

My profile wouldn’t get highlighted.

–Well, maybe some colors ?

Naahhh … colors might look too designer for a software engineer resume. Maybe this will be good for a UI designer’s or a photographer’s profile. But, definitely not for a software engineer’s profile.

–How about some images ?

Hmm, interesting ! maybe I could use the logo of my companies. The colors are all picked so, I’ll not need to worry about softening the images for professional looks. Good idea !

And you know what … this will also make my resume stand out in the crowd. One stone two birds !!!

–You know what I could also use a “timeline look” for my work experience !

Good idea; will help the recruiters understand the complete experience with a single look + the timeline might complement the company logos, I plan to use.

Niceee …. So my resume stands out coz it has images + makes the recruiter’s life easier + and this is definitely more interesting than a paragraph of text.

–I should definitely keep the main ideas bulleted

–I can also bold or underline important items.

–Then I can use a table like structure wherever I can fit it … project details, education. Wait I could also box my skills by type … database, java, generic and stuff

–IMPORTANT … no crowding of text. I don’t want myself to struggle to read my profile … don’t wanna push the recruiter’s motivation.

Sum up

My mind chatter above kind of sums up what I understand to be a good idea to beautify my resume:

●I am gonna keep the resume clean.

Clean font size, clean font types, and cleanly separated text.

●Within reason, pictures are my friends.

They attract attention, and unlike text they are interesting. But, overuse of or too bright pictures can make my profile look too shiny. I guess ‘tasteful’ is the word.

●I can leverage the pics to tell a story … maybe use a timeline, maybe a collage of technologies, maybe a map of locations.

●Bold and underline are good, and over-used ideas.

●Finally, crowding not permitted.

I do NOT want to push the recruiter’s motivation, in reading my profile.

Is this a standard template?

Designing a resume like designing anything else, is an artistic attempt and, is unlike writing the resume content, which would be more scientific.

The designing recipe I share here is fit for my resume and might NOT fit many others. Remember awkward!

If you choose a good template and edit your resume well, then you might NOT this step at all.

Keeping the above in mind, let’s go ahead and start editing my resume for beautification !

Write back, in case you have an opinion. Like what you read – do like, comment and share.