5 Tips for You to Write a Professional Resume in 2021

02.12.2021 | Blog

 

Do you know how to write a professional resume?

Writing a professional, quality resume is the basics of job hunting; however, it seems like a lot of people struggle to write the best resume to get jobs. In this article, we will tell you the 5 tips that help you to write a professional resume!

 

 

 1. What is a Resume? 

 

According to Marriam-Webster, a resume is a summary of the person’s career, education, accomplishment, and such. A resume usually includes the information below. 

  • Personal information (name, address, phone number, email address)
  • Education background
  • Work experience (either full-time, part-time, or internship)
  • Skills you have (ex: communication, Microsoft word, Japanese, etc.) 
  • Awards (ex: scholarships, etc.)
  • Leadership/ club activities (ex: Vice president- Japanese manga club) 

Some people add a “language section” to indicate how many languages they can speak, as well as how fluent they are. In addition to that, it is completely ok to combine your work experience and volunteer experience into a “work experience” section.

I believe that now you know what kind of content a resume includes. Next, let’s move on to the 5 tips for you to write a professional resume!

 

 

 2. The 5 Tips to Write a Professional Resume

 

Here are some hints for you to write a quality, easy-to-read, and professional resume. If you already wrote your resume, please go over these 5 tips and make your resume look even better!

 

2-1. Make a summary of your resume

The first tip is to write a summary of your educational background, work experience, skills you have… on the top of your resume. Since employers usually have a minimal amount of time to review candidates’ resumes, stating a summary on the top of your resume helps employers to understand you as quickly as they can, in the most efficient way. 

It is even better to include “numbers” in your summary section to describe your experience. For example, you can say “I have a total of 18 years of customer service experience in Japan” instead of explaining every single job you have done as a customer service representative. Numbers usually give employers a better understanding and it catches their eyes! 

 

2-2. Use a clean font with an appropriate size 

Your resume must be easy to read, easy to find information. As I mentioned above, employers only have a limited amount of time to go through a lot of people’s resumes, so please choose readable fonts to write your resume!

My recommendation for fonts, as well as font sizes, is below.

  • Font: Ariel, Times New Roman
  • Size: 10pt to 12pt

In addition to that, you might want to try reducing any white space on your resume. Having a lot of blank white space on your resume indicates that you only have a little work experience or skills in total. Therefore, I recommend you to add “summary” “awards” “club activities”, or use the bigger font (up to 12pt!) to reduce the white space. 

 

2-3. Make it less than 2 pages

Next, you shouldn’t write a very long resume although you have a lot of amazing work experience, educational background, or skills. As you already know, employers do not have a lot of time to review all candidates’ resumes, so it is better to make it as short as you can, but a quality resume. 

The ideal length is 1 to 2 pages, so if you have too much information to write on your resume, please pick the most relevant information to the position you are willing to apply, and prioritize it so that your resume will have the most important information that employers want to know from you. 

 

2-4. Use “active language” for your resume

Let’s use “active language” such as completed, accomplished, achieved, earned... to make your resume readable. If each sentence looks too long or seems hard to read, employers will not go over your resume. 

400+ Resume Active Words

You can visit this URL above, and use active language on your resume as much as you can! This will make your resume look even more professional. 

 

2-5. Research your ideal job’s job description

Once you found your ideal job, let’s research more about it. If you can find a job description for the particular position, you can pay attention to “requirement” or “qualification” and see if you have suitable skills for the position. Even though you seem like you don’t have enough skills, that’s fine! Go through the job description/ job postings and pick up “keywords.” If you can try to include those keywords into your resume, that will make employers interested in you and these keywords may catch employers’ eyes!

 

 

To sum up, these are the 5 tips for you to write a professional resume.

If you follow these 5 hints and write/ rewrite your resume, your resume will be even more outstanding and looking professional.

 

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