The main thing that students struggle with these days, especially the students in the last year of their college, is how to build the perfect resume. The resume will represent them to a company and become the deciding factor as to whether the candidate will get a chance to sit in an interview or not.
OysterConnect brings you its monthly CEO Speaks session with the CEO of OysterConnect, Mrs. Rimy Oberoi where we discuss about topics that you guys are interested in.
Q1. How have resumes changed over the years?
In the last decade or so, there has been a huge jump in the way resumes are created. Earlier resumes did not have clarity in terms of what was important and hence, a recruiter had to search for the right kind of information. But now, the way the font size, colour and the grouping of data in today’s time makes it very easy for a recruiter to look at information and hence be able to process a resume in a better way. This has got to do with the change in technology, templates available, ease of creating a resume making.
Q2. On average, how much time does a recruiter spend on a resume?
Interestingly, with technology, you’re browsing a resume on a computer. You are no longer looking at it as much on a physical piece of paper because of which recruiters spend lesser time. A decade ago one would spend up to a minute, now it’s half, maybe 30 seconds.
Q3. How long should a resume be?
The fundamental piece is if anything is on the second page, it means ‘not as important as’ what is on the first page. So, a resume should be as short as possible because most people are spending very little time on a resume. They’re using filters to initially shortlist a resume. So they are expecting the resumes that come in, meet a certain level in terms of academic background or the years of experience. So, people are not going to spend more than 30 seconds on 2 pages. They are going to mostly end on the first page but, if you have a lot of experience, maybe 2, but not more than that.
Q4. Besides education and work experience, what does a recruiter look for in a resume?
Young people should sit down and think about what defines them in terms of their strengths, interests and their objective and be able to summarize that into a 140 character equivalent of a tweet. Something that you would write on twitter as the part of the first thing they write on their resume. It helps a recruiter to understand what exactly is this person all about. It helps to start the story. Many times recruiters are disappointed by one-liners that seem to be cut pasted from somewhere or things which seem to be just trying to fit any kind of role. Secondly, recruiters would look for an outstanding experience, which means that the person made an effort to participate in that and is proud of his achievement. It is given considerable weight-age.
Q5. Should internships and projects be mentioned in the resumes?
It’s a very important thing for young people who have no prior experience as in standard corporate experience, internships or any kind of short term employment defines them. It defines their interests. It defines the way they want to carry out what they want to do with their lives and if they don’t have that, it means they lack initiative, they lack the desire to explore themselves. That in itself is a warning sign for a recruiter. So, it’s extremely important, if not essential to have an internship and short projects on the resume.
Q6. Advice for the first time resume makers?
There are two kinds of resumes that recruiters come across with young people:
1. First is the resume approach where it’s driven by the college itself, so students can do too much. In campus, students should follow the framework. It is useful for the recruiters also. They know where to look for what. Within that, experiment as much as possible. Ensure that your achievements are not just about stating what you’ve achieved, but instead stating your learning from that,
2. The second scenario is when you have the freedom to build a resume your way. There are a lot of templates where you can immediately group your skills on the left side, immediately below your facts about where you live and your phone number, your coordinates, which helps immediately draw attention.
Also, writing a great objective, like mentioned earlier would be really useful, because rest of the stuff is really similar when you’re a young person, you’ve just passed out from the college and hence the kind of specifics would be really similar, so it will be useful to put in some creativity in your resume to make it stand out, but if your college doesn’t allow, that’s also absolutely fine.
