As competition in the job market is fiercer than ever before, it is even more important for job seekers to stand out from thousands of applicants in order to be THE ideal candidate for jobs in Malaysia.
One of the best ways is through highlighting strengths on resume, no doubt about that. What does “Strengths” means in this context? They are traits and proficiencies that are able to bring value to the vacancy and ultimately – the organisation.
If you need help in incorporating your majestic strengths on resume, continue reading to learn the five easy ways to do so!
How to Highlight Your Strengths on Resume
1. Brainstorm & Categorise
Before you start filling in your strengths on resume, you should do a self-reflection and brainstorm your strengths beforehand. How can you relate your strengths with your life thus far? Start by referring to the categories stated below.
Strengths normally originate from life experiences such as making the bed every morning (being disciplined) and arranging your files every week (being organised) – also known as personal strengths.
Another source of strengths would be through work experiences such as public speaking, negotiation, and being analytical – also known as professional strengths.
Your list of strengths would typically be made up of a combination of personal and professional strengths. Have a moment to think about it and you may even discover something you didn’t know about yourself!
2. Research Job Vacancy
The next step is to research the job vacancies that you are planning to apply for. It’s not that complicated really, all you need to do is to carefully go through the requirements that the company is looking for.
Are these companies seeking talents that are meticulous? Punctual? Critical? Multi-lingual? The better you understand what employers are looking for, the better you could craft your strengths on resume.
The main idea is to match their requirements (provided you are genuine) and ensure that your profile matches the ideal talent they’re looking for. For example, if they are looking for a graphic designer, “creativity” would be a suitable choice.
All you need to do is to highlight the important and relevant strengths in the right place. How do you do that? Continue reading to find out.
3. It’s Show Time
Once the research phase has been completed, it’s time to put your strengths into writing.
A resume objective serves as your formal opening statement and it helps employers to identify your skills and strengths immediately.
Include your strengths on resume when you are describing how your skills and experience can contribute to the company’s success – your value proposition.
Example:
“A meticulous and caring fresh graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Nursing seeking employment as a junior nurse in hospital DEF. I seek to leverage my 2 years of experience and outstanding results to bring the best service for patients in the intensive care unit.”
When writing your job scopes, you should include your strengths, achievements and metrics that can better illustrate the awesome tasks you do on a daily basis.
Example:
“Recognised annually as the Best Performing Employee in the HR department for meticulously creating and executing HR campaigns with minimal supervision.”
4. Enhance Your Statement
There are two main ways to enhance your statements on your resume – achievements and numbers.
In order to prove the strengths that you’re going to include on resume, they must be backed up by achievements. For example, if you are good at “persuasion”, include accomplishments such as “closed 10 property sales in 2 weeks”.
Based on the example given, it’s not enough to just list down your achievements plainly – you should include some metrics to enhance them. Saying that you are good at sales is not as impressive as saying that you closed dozens of deals in a short period of time.
Your strengths on resume have to be relevant to your achievements as well as the keywords found in the job advertisement. You must be able to tie multiple items together in order to truly stand out from the crowd.
5. Proofread Your Masterpiece
If you include “Detail-oriented” as one of your strengths, how ironic is it if there are grammatical and/or spelling errors discovered in your resume by hiring managers?
Or worse, imagine applying for your dream job, preparing the strengths to include in your resume, going through a tough interview process and never hearing back from the company because you’ve misspelt your email address.
Truth is, no matter how detail-oriented we may be, it is always good to proofread your resume and make sure that your strengths and their elaborations make sense.
Doing so could also ensure that your strengths-related content is ATS-compatible. No point in writing a majestic resume when the ATS could not read your content and strengths properly.
Closing Remarks
Listing out your strengths on resume sounds fun, however, you should always be honest and present your strengths according to your actual capabilities. There’s nothing worse than simply listing out strengths and not being able to perform accordingly afterwards.
Other than that, all the best! Now that you are well-versed in highlighting your strengths on resume, you should also take a look at your extracurricular section, education section, as well as your skills section in your resume.
Together, these majestic sections will bring you closer to landing your dream jobs in Malaysia!
