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Do’s

  1. Use STAR method under ‘experiences’ & ‘projects’ headings
  2. Use bullet points and be as concise as possible
  3. If you are a current student or a recent graduate having a limited number of experiences, use the projects you have done in your degree (2 or 3 biggest projects that are most relevant to the Job Description)
  4. Embed LinkedIn profile link, so that it is clickable and recruiter doesn’t have to copy and paste it
  5. Where content is not enough i.e for recent graduates and current students, lab projects, semester projects, side projects, and presentations are good ways to demonstrate their capability to fit into the job they are applying to.
  6. Simply listing the skills is not going to help much, list the Situation, Tasks, Actions involving specific skills and tools used, and the Quantifiable/Measurable result(s) produced
  7. It is fundamentally important to identify primary and secondary keywords used in the job description and then use those keywords within the bullet points in resume. If this step is skipped, there is a high chance that recruiters might not find you relevant, or your resume might not get past the shortlisting by Application Tracking Systems (ATS).
  8. In case you are targeting multiple roles, create multiple versions of resume, writing relevant projects & experiences in each. e.g one resume could be for electronics and embedded systems, and other can be communication engineering.

DON’Ts

  1. Do not add a picture to your resume, unless SPECIFICALLY required.
  2. Do not write references unless mentioned as required in the job post
  3. Do not include:
    1. CNIC number (highly sensitive)
    2. Date of birth (highly sensitive)
    3. Precise address (just write Rawalpindi, Pakistan) if you must
    4. Or any other PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION, because it can be used for identity theft
    5. Nationality, marital status, or religion
  4. For early career and recent graduates, avoid exceeding length beyond 1.5 pages (not a set rule but a good reference) with information or details/experiences not directly relevant to the job. Instead, you could create a heading at the end and write one bullet each for each irrelevant experience.
    • e.g for a Data Analyst Internship position
      • Other Experiences:
        • Freelance Content Writer – Part Time (Apr 2016-July 2018)
        • Network Operations Intern – 8 weeks (Jun 2017 – July 2017)
  5. Follow reverse chronological order i.e write most recent experience etc first then older and so on.
    1. Write highest level of education first, then lower, and so on.
    2. Writing month, year helps understand your journey and potential (for instance, you might have been a Volunteer at 2 organisations while working full-time but recruiter doesn’t know until they see month, year). Example: Data Scientist at Teradata (July 2018 – Nov 2020)

Headings You Could Use

  • Summary (Optional)
    • Bullet points explaining core capabilities
  • Experiences
    • Subheading 1, 2…
      • Bullet points explaining Situation, Tasks, Action and (quantifiable/measurable) Results (e.g 30% increase in sales or 35% reduction in cost etc)
  • Publication(s) (Optional)
  • Projects (3 best semester projects, if experiences are limited; otherwise projects on job or side-projects)
    • Subheading 1, 2…
      • Bullet points explaining Situation, Tasks, Action and (quantifiable/measurable) Results (e.g 30% increase in sales or 35% reduction in cost etc)
  • Skills
  • Other Expereinces (those not directly relevant to JD)
    • One bullet for each experience
  • Education
  • Volunteer

STAR Method

STAR Method - Resume

STAR Method – Resume

Example of STAR Method in Resume

ACME Canada, August 2012 to Sep 2014
  • Customer improvement software project at second largest widget producer in Canada – Situation
  • Project manager with a team of 7 members, responsible for delivery of software changes within time and budget – Task
  • Coordinated with internal and external stakeholders (including consultants of software supplier), delivering monthly project reporting to the project board. – Action
  • Took appropriate actions to control project budget while ensuring quality of the end result. – Action
  • Successfully delivered a new customer shop website with an improved User Interface (UI), resulting into 25% increase in sales due to an improved UI. – Result
  • Cross selling feature resulted into 30% extra sales of related products. – Result