A Face of Beauty Wins Everywhere
This is an old saying – A face of beauty wins everywhere. All humans are characteristically worshippers of beauty and aesthetics. It is an inherent human psychology that we all love beauty. Hold your breath and answer a simple question: If you see a beautiful woman comes in your neighborhood, don’t you feel a temptation to get introduced with her? But say if she is very ugly, do you feel the same temptation? Answer honestly to yourself. Probably the answer that will come out from your heart will be ‘No’. This is a deep-rooted human psychology. We even give the priority to beauty over activity sometimes. So following the same norm, your resume must look very professional and elegant at the same time. It does not mean that it should be colorful or funky, but you must take enough care so that your resume becomes professionally elegant.

Easier Readability
When you make your resume visually worthy, it becomes easier to read by the recruiters. When your recruiters give less effort in decoding your resume, they give more attention in understanding your credibility from it. When it is visually appealing and easy-to-read, your recruiters feel less negatively. In fact, research has shown to some extent recruiters even ignore minor mistakes present in the resume if they find the resume visually appealing. When you write your resume in an organized fashion and set your data in a chronological manner, while maintaining the appropriate amount of spacing in the resume, your resume will look visually appealing. If you find this idea bit confusing, it is better for you to seek professional help. In fact, any standard professional resume writer puts a special emphasis over visual appeal despite the qualitative status of the applicants.

Effective Size Management
When you care most about the visual appeal of your resume, quite obviously, your resume obtains an optimum amount of size. In fact, it is your responsibility to create a resume which is visually appealing and optimally saved for web. If your resume size is bigger, it means that it will take much time to download. Every one ideally prefers not to waste their time for any irrelevant cause. Recruiters are no exception. If they find any resume takes much time to load, they lose their interest in it. This eventually affects the applicant’s possibility to get absorbed in an adverse manner.

Not Providing a Secure and Unique Email Address
If you do not use a secure and unique email address in your resume, then chances are there that your email address gets tagged with spam spiders and become not reachable to many desired destinations. So it is always advised that you use a separate, secure and unique email address for your resume. In fact, it is even better if you can create separate email address for separate version of your resume or separate types of career you are going to apply. Ask your service provider or create free email account from any standard free email providers.

Not Including Keyword Based Professional Summary
When you post your resume virtually, it is stored in a virtual database. A database stores millions of resume in it. In order to get higher accessibility, it is important to create keyword based professional summary in the resume. It helps the search engine to track the resume with higher priority. When your resume is called by the preset programs, then only it is accessed and read by human recruiters. So, in order to get the higher degree of attention, it is important to create a resume rich in keywords.
Now the question is how do you make your resume keyword rich? For doing that you may seek help from professional resume writers or else you may depend on high quality resume builder software. If you wish to do it manually, you must analyze the job requirement and tally it in comparison with your own skills and experiences and find out relevant words or small phrases out of the combination and put them accordingly in your resume. However, you must make a short and precise summary – just a three or four sentences long. Be careful – in order to get the higher attention, you must not insert irrelevant keywords in your resume, otherwise the search engine software will penalize you and your resume will never be attended.

Using Creative Job Title
You must be enough creative while describing your job title in your resume. Remember there are hundreds and thousands of applicants who have either same talents like you or even more. But you have to obtain higher degree of attention. So, putting a creative job title can drag the attention of the recruiters and they find interest in your insights and intuitive abilities apart from the basic qualities that you have for a prospective job opportunity. If you can follow these simple rules, you can get optimum hits after you post your resume in virtual database.

Changing Location
If you are a job seeker, quite possibly you have listed your resume in different job placement sites. Now let us assume that you have shifted to a new home and you simply forget to keep your resume updated. What can be the next situation? Your resume is accessed by a potential recruiter who has a dream job to offer you. He likes your skills and experiences and makes a plan to get in touch with you. Now he tries to call you up in your land line, but ends up without any response, since it is a dead end and you are not living there. So how the situation will be ended? It’s nothing but you do not even get to know about the opportunity that probably knocks your door.

Changing Email Address
Since a majority of people actually create their email address from free email service providers, we do not value much for a single email address. Many times it happens that an individual has several email address and that he does not even remember properly. For example, if you are using abc@xyz.com this year, quite possibly you may use pqr@mno.com in the next year. The problem is when we change our primary email address we simply forget to update it in our resume. Consequently, when a new job opportunity comes in our previous email boxes, we do not even get to know about it and miss the opportunity badly.

Getting Higher Degree
This is a critical mistake that many people do. In this type of mistakes, we prepare a resume with certain qualifications. After few years or so, when you get added degrees or certificates, we do not bother about updating our resume accordingly. The result is obviously we are getting opportunities, but those opportunities are aligned with lower degrees or certificates, however, we deserve more with the added qualifications or experiences. But simply because we have not updated our resume properly, we are missing the opportunities to get hired in the higher position.

Adding New Skills
Similar to higher degrees or new experiences, without updating the essential details of new skills you can lose the higher level of opportunities that you actually deserve. In the professional job market, the value of skills and experience are most important. So when you are adding new skills, you can let the world know about it only via your resume. But if you are not keeping your resume updated, that means no one will be able to know about it. Result? You know it better.

Preparation for Online Submission
When you are preparing your resume for online submission, you need to follow few basic rules so that you can get optimum output. First of all, you must make your resume keywords rich, so that it can be easily tracked down by search engines. Not only that, a good eye-catchy formatting is also essential for making the highest appeal. Apart from that, you need to understand the difference between functional and chronological resume and you have to prepare both of the types depending on your job criteria. For preparing the functional resume, you have to put emphasis over your skills and achievements rather than length of employment, on the other hand, chronological resume takes much interest in the length of employment.
Secondly, you have to be enough careful about the entire formatting of the page of the resume. Many times employers ask for a printer-friendly version of the resume from the applicants. Again many times, they need text-only version and if you try changing your MS-Word document into a text format, it may not come out as nicely as it should be. So, you have to prepare a printer-friendly version, a email-version that you can send as an attachment or can paste in the body of the email and a text-only version.

Web Form Submission
There are many job sites where you may apply for a particular job. In fact, these job sites may ask you to store your resume in their database. In such cases, you may need to fill a web form, where you need to put your first name, last name, address, email address, experience, qualifications, skills and many others in specific text fields. In addition, you may also need to submit your own MS-Word formatted resume, however, in few cases, it may also become an optional choice. After you submit your personal and professional information, this web-forms store your data in a resume format and your prospective employers get an access to it. In order to get the highest accessibility, it is always essential that you add relevant keywords in your resume so that it can get noticed easily by many employers. However, it is always obligatory that you craft your resume with absolute honesty, since today many companies validate the candidature of the applicants.

E-Mail Submission
In email submission, all you need to do send your resume via email. For this type of submission, you may either copy your resume and paste in the body of the email and send to the employer by putting the email address of the employer in the ‘To’ field. Or else, you may also attach the resume by clicking the attachment button and then send it to the prospective employer. For the first case, you just make it sure that the formatting is not getting disrupted after you paste the document in the body of the email. If so, you need to modify it accordingly to make it correct and eye-appealing.

While choosing an ideal resume template for you, you must have some idea about the basic terminologies used to characterize the specific genre of a particular resume template. The most common terminologies used are functional resume, chronological resume and combined resume. It is essential to have a clear understanding about each of these genres. Regardless of the type of job you are applying for, you must have a desire of having a shinning resume that will set your candidature apart from the rest of the applicants. So, it is possible only you will gather some working knowledge about these genres of resume template.

Functional Resume
This genre of resume template is ideal to portray awards and achievements, professional skills, and credentials, while including an extensive overview of the past responsibilities hold, instead of listing up career span on a particular company or company location. This style of resume template helps you to allocate your qualification as a bunch and puts its effort in revealing your strengths in a specific domain. For instance, if you worked as an artist in different companies, you experience receives special attention here, however, you hold the same position in different companies.

Chronological Resume
As its name suggests, in chronological resume template, your job experiences will be listed in a chronological format, beginning with the current one. Unlike the functional resume, chronological resume puts much emphasis on the length of the employment rather than strength of the candidate. However, in chronological format a persistent growth of the candidate is quite apparently placed. This type of resume is suitable for people who have started their career from an entry level and then gradually promoted to executive level. For example, if you have started your career as a sales person and then gradually improve your career line and get promoted to business development officer in step-by-step. In such type of resume is ideal for focusing on the growth in the frame of time and recognitions.

Combined Resume
Quite obviously, as its name implies combined resume is a blend of both functional and chronological resume. This genre of resume template asserts on awards, achievements, recognitions, and skills in relation to the position and responsibilities held. In addition, it also places a great emphasis on employment history and academic qualification. If you are going to prepare a combined resume for you, you need to set the chronological order in reverse format as it is in the chronological resume.

Putting Vague Intentions
Since career objective is a vital segment in any resume, so putting a vague intention in your resume in the form of career objective can not higher your chances to be absorbed. Do not write phrases like “aspiring for a challenging position where my skills can be exploited”. This type of phrase looks like you do not have any clear idea about what you want in your career. On the other hand, you can use a job title in order to explain your career objective in a definitive fashion, such as Online Freelance Writer, Executive Manager, Business Development Officer, etc. You must mention your career objective clearly and concisely.

Resume Without Any Contact Information
Although this is very rare, but few people become so obsessed with their virtual portfolio that they even do not wish to put their any contact information in their resume apart from their web link for the virtual portfolio. If you are among them, do not expect that your prospective employers become so much happy if you plunge them to put so much effort just to find your contact information. So you must include your first name, last name, contact address, phone number and email address. You must put this information on the top of the resume, so that it can be easily readable by your employers.

Formatting in Cookie Cutter Pattern
Although MS Word, by default, offers a wealth of resume templates, but you must not use them to prepare your resume. Since the macro formatting for the tables embedded in the resume template occupy tons of spaces, the size of the resume becomes much higher. So it becomes tough to attach in the email as well as difficult to read as well. Moreover, if you would like to paste your resume in a web form, not only all the formatting will be lost, but also its visual appearance will become horrible. So don’t do that, but use bold or italics to separate the company name and information while formatting your resume.

Skipping Over Academic Qualifications and Training
Many people simply do not bother much about providing the briefs regarding their academic qualifications and training. However, this is a bad practice. You must include the details of your degree and certificates obtained at the bottom of the resume. Since your academic degrees are an essential cornerstone to measure your abilities and commitment to success, you must not miss adding the relevant details in your resume.

Quality of Language
Although every resume speaks about almost the same content and pattern, but it is the quality of language that answers finally. While making your resume, if you only list up about the job responsibilities you have performed with an expectation that you are able to fabricate a good impression to your prospective employers, you may not be right at all. Remember, your employers simply do not have the time to look through the details of your job responsibilities. So these are not as worthy as you assume.

Keep It Simple
Show your prospective employers that you are able to provide a solid example of achievement. First of all, you must use action-oriented keywords with a special emphasis on your problem-solving ability, performance-driven quality and goal-based attitude. Second most important point is that you must list up your statements in an order that will help the employers to have an insight about your aspiration level. You can list up instances and incidences where companies have made profit due to your individual contribution. A winning resume must put stress over quantitative data rather than qualitative ones.

Brief and Precise
You must understand a simple rule while preparing your resume that ‘nobody has enough time to go through a long resume’. So you don’t keep any intention to make your prospective employers tired by sending a long resume, or else, you will achieve everything except a job. You must put the data in a precise manner. It is better to put the data in a chronological manner rather than throwing it in a scattered pattern. As it is seen commonly, the resume longer than two pages have a lower probability to get noticed by prospective employers.

Research Thoroughly
Resume is like a mirror. So when you send someone your resume, it seems that you have sent a picture of yours. So take enough time to prepare a resume, since it is your reflection to your prospective employers, and probably there is no one on the face of earth who does not want to present him or her beautifully. If you are able to prepare a winning resume by doing thorough research and putting enough time, you are going to crack many interviews. If not, and you have done the resume quite casually, applying for a job may seem to be nothing but wastage of time. Is there anyone who wants to waste time by sending unworthy resume every time, instead of putting time to prepare a worthy and winning resume?

Keep It Simple
Simplicity rules, so if you tend to use jargons and lengthy sentences, you must take enough care while crafting your resume. Because resume is not an ideal place to put jargons or lengthy words, you must try your best to use simple words and sentences while crafting your resume. It is better if you can put your academic qualification in a tabular form or your job responsibilities in a bulleted list, so that employers can easily decode it.

Label Your Expertise
In the job Market, the most essential criterion is how you can sell your talent and expertise. Grab the attention of the prospective employers simply by putting your talent and expertise in a single sentence just on the top of your resume. It will help you to have a strengthened resume that sets you apart from the rest. When the employers scrutinize the resumes, they do not employ much time over a single resume. This is why a resume must have the ability to draw attention of the employers at the first glance.

Maintain Your Focus
While preparing your resume, you must stay focused to your career objective. It may be quite possible that you have a wide variety of career exposure in your life. But that does not necessarily mean you have to add each and every one in your resume. Rather you must craft your resume following your current career focus in mind. If you do not follow this rule, chances are there that your employers might get confused about your prospective contribution and you are not offered as you desire for.

Saturate With Keywords
Especially when you are submitting your resume in any online job site, it is mandatory that you put relevant keywords as much as possible. Online submission of resume demands a flood of keywords since keywords help in locating in the search engine in a better way. Putting keywords is not an easy task. If you find things complicated, you may ask for help from professionals or you may count on different keywords software available in the Internet. This software helps you to find out relevant keywords for your resume. Otherwise, you may write keywords manually. For doing this, you need to put words from your expertise, professional qualification and relevant job market.

Make It Short
Many people forget that writing resume and writing essay is not the same thing. Admitted you have an extensive career, but that does not mean that your resume should reflect each and every component in an elaborative format. You must be precise while crafting your resume. Resume lengthier than two pages does not look too appealing. So be careful enough while crafting your resume. Make it short and simple, but to-the-point.

Pictures DON’T Required
This is definitely a myth. Since US market does not demand for a picture in every job, but that does not mean somebody is forbidding you from inserting a photograph in your resume. Of course, the look and feel of the photograph you have chosen exclusively for the purpose of resume should contain a professional elegance and appearance. US market never demands photograph since it predominantly stresses over indiscrimination policy. However, aviation field is certainly an exception.

DON’T Put Website’s Address
Certainly the addition of website address is a great option for a resume. In fact, it enhances the overall appearance of a resume. Many people still discourages about adding the website addresses without any proper reason behind. You can definitely add your website address to your resume, if it does not contain any explicit material, abusive content, political controversies, etc. Please be sure that there are certain jobs that highly discourage about any controversial paradigm.

DON’T Put Hobbies and Interests
On the contrary, I must say that you should put your hobbies and interests, if you are preparing your resume for the first job. When there is nothing in your resume to show the prospective employers about you professional caliber, all you can show him your interests and hobbies in the form of talents. In fact, hobbies and interests are very important for the first time resume makers. These are the points by analyzing which prospective employers become able to know about your talent in relation to particular job suitability. So, never omit them.

Making Flat Layout DOESN’T Work
This is absolutely a misconception. On the contrary, making layout simple will only work. You must use either white or off-white papers for crafting your resume. You must not use any ornamental fonts to write anything on resume paper. Fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Garamond, Georgia and Trebuchet MS are mostly preferable for writing in a resume. You even must not use uneven size of the fonts to write on your resume. Preferably a font size of 10 for Arial, Verdana and Trebuchet MS and a font size of 12 for Times New Roman are appropriate for writing the resume.

However, if you are applying for any creative post, say fashion designing or so, you may apply some unconventional pattern in your resume. It should never be too bright, or else, you will get noticed but in an adverse manner. In fact, it is better to craft the creative resume in a paper which has a white background with a path of colors in the foreground. However, you must put the font color in black irrespective of the choice of resume.

Formatting Is Important
Many people simply do not care about the formatting of their resume. They just put data on a paper and submit in the name of a resume. This is not at all appreciated. You must put your time and effort to create a well-formatted resume. Many people, on the other hand, put excessive effort to decorate their resume, which is again not intended. Resume should reflect a professional mind. Employers usually do not prefer resume with uneven or decorative fonts, different sizes of fonts and colors, since this type of resume does not reflect professionalism.

Proofreading Is Important
You must take enough care while preparing your resume so that it is free from any spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Resume with spelling and grammatical mistakes not only reflects lack of common sense, but also it does not look professional. So, give enough attention to every minor detail and check and re-check all the spellings and grammatical layout of your resume. It is always better to take suggestion from friends and experienced individuals about the appropriate writing style for a resume.

Ordering Is Important
Crafting resume is not an easy job, especially when you are doing it for the first time. You must keep all the data in a chronological order. It is better to start with your name, contact address, phone number and email address. After that, you may write down you career objective. Next, you may write your academic qualification and then come straight to work experience. Do not forget to label all the sections. You may also add your hobbies and interests. However, people working in the professional field for quite a long time may not add hobbies section usually.

Analytical Perspective Is Important
Think many times when you are going to craft your resume. Think again why you need resume. Resume is nothing but a brief overview of your talent, qualification, expertise and experience. So, your prospective employer must have a clear overview about you when he will see your resume. He must know how you will be able to bring business for him, how he can be able to make profit out of your contribution. So, when you list up your experience in your resume, you must highlight it clearly in terms of profits earned by previous companies and your contribution in it. It will rock.