Polish Resume 101
Upon completing your majestic resume, you may still be hesitant to submit your resume during your job application process. Sometimes, all you need is a final push by polishing your resume so that you’ll be more confident when applying for jobs in Malaysia.
A polished resume is highly readable and properly formatted. It is crucial to polish your resume to ensure that your reader is fully interested in going through your resume and increasing your chances of getting hired.
If you need crucial tips to help you polish resume properly for each job application, you’re at the right place.
Best Ways to Polish Resume
1. More is NOT Always Better
Depending on the seniority, it is common to have a long-winded resume, detailing all of the work experience and skills on two pages or more. However, a long resume does not always mean a good resume.
Tips to polish resume: Put yourself in the shoes of your audience – the recruiters and hiring managers. Since they typically go through hundreds of resumes on a daily basis, your resume must be attractive enough for them to continue reading after the 6-second mark.
If possible, try to include all of the information on just one page. Even if you have extensive work experience and achievements, the information should be carefully selected and customised into a single-page resume for better readability.
2. Readability & Formatting
On the topic of readability, your resume must be using the correct resume format according to the kind of jobs you’re applying for.
Tips to polish resume: Regardless of which resume formats you use, be sure to list down your work experience and academic qualifications using the reverse-chronology method.
In terms of resume fonts, use some of our highly recommended resume fonts such as Cambria, Calibri, and Arial – these fonts are easy to read, provided that you are using the golden standard font size of 12 points. Feel free to play around with larger fonts when it comes to section headings (e.g. “Education”, “Work Experience”, etc.).
Lastly, the top section of your resume (known as ‘above the fold’) is extremely valuable. In order to hook the reader’s attention and land a good impression, the top fold of your resume must showcase the resume objective, best accomplishments and most relevant skills.
3. Be Convincing
In essence, you should answer the question “Why should we hire you” when polishing your resume. In this day and age where the job market is highly competitive, your resume has to stand out from hundreds of other job applicants.
Tips to polish resume: The best way to stand out is by having impressive numbers and accomplishments on your resume. Instead of merely writing your “duties”, try your best to highlight your achievements and quantify your job scopes.
When polishing your resume, ensure that you demonstrate how you have brought value to your organisation – for example:
- Lead a program to reduce high food costs by 25% and cut high turnover by 15%
- Initiated marketing strategies to improve low internal NPS scores by 35% in a year
- Handled on average 50 customer service calls per day and reduced waiting time by 20% in 6 months
4. Connect With Your Audience
Firstly, always have a clear understanding of your audience – i.e. who’s reading your resume. Think about questions such as the identity of your audience, the importance of your audience in this job application, as well as the ideal candidate that they are looking for.
Follow that up with comprehensive research on the job advertisements, company websites and/or social media. Identify the common keywords (e.g. creative, analytical, multilingual) and try to incorporate these elements in your resume wherever possible.
Final tips to polish resume: Not only you’d have to think about your audience, but you’d also have to cater to the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Since ATS is programmed to catch specific keywords in your resume, inserting highly-relevant keywords is crucial
5. Proofread Your Resume
The process of proofreading a resume is not difficult but is often neglected. When hiring managers discover careless grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, it gives the first impression that the applicant is not professional and not attentive to detail.
In order to ensure that your job application process goes smoothly, proofreading your resume is one of the many ways to polish your resume properly. It also ensures that your resume is ATS-compatible to pass the initial filtering process.
It’s not rocket science to polish resume – Use proper software such as Grammarly to quickly filter out the spelling and grammatical errors, but also get your friends and family to read through your content to ensure that you are getting the right information across to your potential employer.
Polish Resume Before Your Apply
We hope that this guide has taught you how to polish resume before applying for the best jobs in Malaysia. For more information, you may find detailed, step-by-step guidance on each of the tips by clicking on the links provided.
If you are a fresh graduate and need more help on resume writing, head on to our Job Majestic Youtube Channel for more Fresh Graduates Interview Tips today!
Time to land the Right Job, for a Majestic Life!
