Why Do We Make Resumes?

When you look around the Internet, you see thousands of sites advising you to make a resume, many of which offer resume tips that claim to make your resume even better. But why do you make a resume in the first place?

A resume consists of a list of what you have done and where you did it. You include a bit of info about what you learned from each job, add in a section for your personal life and hobbies and then it is done. Your resume gives a recruiter a chance to look over your life (condensed into one page or two depending on your amount of experience) and decide whether you are particularly qualified.

When you do not make a resume, you are basically excluded from the vast majority of jobs. Word-of-mouth hiring is less prominent now that communication is so easy, and many businesses require that you make a resume so that it can be uploaded into their systems. Reading and writing skills are usually quickly discerned by a quick scan of the document so interviewers can tell who knows how to run a basic grammar check and who has decent reading and writing skills.

What eventually happens to that resume is that the prospective employer spends around five to 10 seconds reading through it before making a decision on whether to interview you. When you make a resume, you need it to be good. You need it to grab attention. This is where brevity and conciseness are important. When you make your resume, place a brief summary of your career on top. This needs to be a sentence long. Other resume tips include adding in keywords relevant to your career path and ensuring that the resume is tailored to match the job requirements. You also need to customize the opening, if not the whole resume.

Those who want to apply for very specialized positions may benefit from a different form of resume: a personalized website. Add in a QR code that links directly to the website via a smartphone scanner, and it can look very impressive. However, that still requires your resume to attract a prospective employer's attention. Not every outside contact requires you to make a resume. If you have your own business, you do not have to make your own resume. Those working as artists need a portfolio, although this is a sort of resume in itself; it is just a little more graphic. Those freelancing do not have to hand out resumes either, although they need to show off their accomplishments in another way.

When you make a resume, it needs to showcase you as a professional in your field. If you fail to make an impression with your resume, you will find it difficult to land a job.

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