What sections should you have on a resume?
Education, Professional Development, Experience and…
By Jacquie Liversidge
Choosing the right sections to add to your resume is not as straight forward as it may appear at first glance.
There are the standard sections we all know about– summary, professional experience, qualifications, references– but have you thought about the ones that are specific to your industry?
I recently completed a resume for an immensely talented software developer, the type of client who has never had to submit a resume together due to having excellent industry networks.
I found all the fundamental details present within the resume he had put together; contact details, referees, achievements, experience, but what was noticeably lacking within his resume and without which was severely going to dampen his prospects, was a section dedicated to his technical skills.
As an example, software developers use a range of platforms, environments and languages specifics to their niche.
Without approaching this resume with the future employer in mind, it can be very easy to leave out these fundamental details relating to specific industry skills which the employer will be specifically looking for.
Simply using an existing template is not going to cut the mustard here.
It can be very difficult to be objective with your own skill set, so when creating your resume, ask yourself these questions:
- What do they want/need to see?
- What is unique about me?
- How can I make this easiest for the employer?
- What will other candidates be including?
Remember the golden rule: employers only look at your resume for an average of 6-10 seconds. You want your future employer to be able to quickly scan and tick off everything they need from you, and then a little bit more.
I hope this will help you in best approaching the sections you need for your resume to have a clear, fit-for-purpose design.
Check out our related article on What skills to include in a resume
Happy hunting!
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