What title should your resume have? What desired position should be indicated in the resume? Desired mode of work in the resume

Let's be honest: a resume is not the most important thing when applying for a job. A person with unique experience and competencies will be invited for an interview, even if his resume is written on a napkin. It’s another matter if he doesn’t yet belong to the category of rare super-professionals. Then the chance to meet competitors in the fight for your dream job increases, and the quality of your resume comes to the fore.

In this article, we have collected tips for writing the perfect resume.

Photos, contacts, place of residence

A photo on your resume will always be a plus, even if the position does not involve communicating with people. A photo will personalize your resume: it will be easier to notice, and the response will be more difficult to miss or delete. But you need to choose a portrait for your resume critically: a bad photo can ruin everything. A professional portrait photo, business-like and neutral, is best.

In the contacts section, pay attention to the mailbox - it must correspond to your professional status. Address [email protected] will emphasize a non-business approach to work. And here [email protected]- already better.

Some applicants indicate their home address in their resume, down to a specific apartment. It is enough to indicate the city or the nearest metro station, for example, “Mytishchi” or “the village of Mansurovo in the Kursk region.”

Desired position and salary

It is not necessary to indicate your desired salary on your resume, but any employer will be happy if you do so. Universal advice in such a situation: write an amount 15–20% greater than what you earn now. This will give you the opportunity to bargain without compromising your own interests. We talked in more detail about how to determine the desired income in.

Check your expectations with the average salary in the market: look at vacancies, at statistics by region and professional field. A salary that is inflated by 40% or more will definitely scare off a recruiter. You can find out the average salary in the market for your city and your professional area in.

The exception is the resume of top managers. Executive salaries are calculated differently from company to company, and specific expectations can make it difficult to get a good deal.

experience

If you are not a beginner, then experience is the main part of your resume. Therefore, this section should be approached with special care.

The experience should appear seamless, that is, without long career breaks. If there were breaks, then they should have an explanation: maternity leave, doing business, freelancing, and so on. We talked more about how to write about gaps in experience in.
The experience should appear stable: if you change jobs more than once a year, the employer will be wary of this. Changes in position within the same company are usually indicated in one block.
Pay attention to the last three years of work: this is of primary interest to employers. We can talk very briefly about the initial stages of my career and what happened more than 10 years ago.
If the company is unknown on the market, indicate its type of activity. Not just LLC “Horns and Hooves”, but “Black Sea branch of the Arbatov office for the procurement of horns and hooves.” The company's activities can be briefly described in the responsibilities block.
In the headings, write generally accepted market job titles: for example, “commercial director” instead of “head of the purchasing and sales coordination department.” The same goes for the resume title. Often, applicants copy the last position into it, which is incorrect: the title should reflect the essence of the job, and not the entry in the employment record. For example, “project manager” seems more universal than “managing director of a business unit.” This will help employers find your resume faster.
Never copy a list of responsibilities from a job description. Highlight the most important ones and write them down in clear language, without red tape. For example, “optimization of business processes” instead of “implementation of project activities to optimize business processes.” Five main tasks will be enough.
In addition to your job responsibilities, be sure to include your specific accomplishments and results (for example, “developed corporate business process control standards with the IT department”).

Avoid general phrases like “was the hardest working employee in the department” - this is an opinion that cannot be verified, so it is not of interest to the employer.

Sometimes applicants describe working in a particular company as if they were writing a chapter from their own biography: “Here I started my career from lower positions, diligently seeking promotion” or “At a quick glance, you might think that the work was easy for me, but in fact it was smooth vice versa". These examples are the standard for how not to describe an experience. A resume works if the employer takes a few seconds to understand the experience and understand that this candidate is worth a closer look. You can demonstrate your enthusiasm in your cover letter.

Education

All educational courses indicated in the resume must be related to professional activities. It is better to miss something than to add dubious certificates - for example, about massage courses - if this knowledge is not needed in your work.

It’s always better to talk about the thorny path to the top at an interview. Therefore, you can skip studying at a technical school or vocational school if you have a higher education diploma in the same field.

key skills

Many applicants completely ignore this section, but in vain: often this is where the recruiter looks after getting to know the candidate’s experience and education. Key skills are specific knowledge and skills related directly to work processes. For lawyers this could be “Arbitration Courts” and “Corporate Law”, for a logistics manager “Working with customs authorities” and “Incoterms”, for a financier - “Statistical Analysis” and “Budgeting”, and so on.

When filling out this section, the site system will suggest the name of a particular skill, offering the shortest and most unified option - if possible, choose that one.

Avoid the obvious: don't say that you know Windows, Internet Explorer, or use email.

About me

Very often, applicants confuse skills with personal qualities and indicate something like “Responsibility” or “Punctuality” in the key skills section. We advise you to write about these qualities in the “About Me” section and avoid platitudes. Instead of “Responsibility” and “Punctuality,” write “I am conscientious in completing tasks” and “I always meet promised deadlines.” This will not change the essence, but the wording will attract more attention.

In some cases, you can indicate personal qualities that are not directly related to the profession - this could be good physical shape or sporting achievements (“CCM in cross-country skiing”). This also applies to representatives of not the most obvious professions: for example, physical fitness is often important for sales managers, since they often have to travel to meetings and business trips.

The same applies to achievements in the intellectual sphere. If you are a city chess champion or won a programming Olympiad, this is interesting. If you're just into reading, then no. Add only what you can prove and what will help you get the desired position.

It is very important for applicants for the position of middle manager to competently and effectively present facts from their professional biography. After all, you only need to talk about what will be significant for the employer and characterize the candidate as a competent manager. Moreover, the main thing is to indicate the desired position, since this is one of the most important points that recruiters pay attention to first of all.

First of all, let's define who is called middle managers. They are heads of projects, functional departments, structural divisions, business areas, whose responsibilities include organizing productive work in their area and managing employees in their department. As a rule, such specialists have a higher education diploma (sometimes several diplomas and a business education), as well as two years of work experience in a managerial position.

All these and other facts of a professional biography require a competent and effective presentation.

Resume appearance

Your resume should contain only those points that will demonstrate to the employer your level of competence and professionalism.

Remember the main thing: a resume is not a biography. You do not need to describe your entire life; you should reflect only those moments that will demonstrate to the employer your level of competence and professionalism. For example, if in one company you rose from the position of a specialist in primary customer service to a department head, be sure to reflect this on your resume, and do not limit yourself to indicating only the last position you held. During the initial selection, recruiters first look at whether the applicant has worked in brand-name companies. But even if there are no large international organizations among your previous employers, information about the number of projects completed - under your leadership or with direct participation - will be no less important. You should also note the number of employees under your command.

“It’s great if the information you want to convey to the employer fits on two pages,” says Anastasia Lipskaya, Head of Personnel Recruitment "Yuppie Group". “This will characterize you as a collected person who knows how to value his own and other people’s time.”

Resume structure

When viewing a resume, the HR manager is primarily interested in the education and work experience of the applicant. The formal requirements of most positions are usually limited to these points:

Desired position.
Usually this column goes at the beginning of the resume, being its original title. The desired position is one of the most important points that the employer pays attention to first, so the wording of this column should be approached very responsibly. The title of the resume usually indicates the position for which the applicant is applying.

You should not position yourself simply as a manager. This will not tell the potential employer anything about the position you are about to take. In addition, in Russia for some reason a person can be called a manager even without having subordinates.
The desired position is one of the most important points that the employer pays attention to first.
Remember, if your resume does not contain a specific desired position, this may mean that you have not yet decided what you plan to do in the future and what kind of work you need.

It is worth keeping in mind that often different job titles are used equally or in parallel to perform the same functionality. When sending out CVs, you should put them in brackets or separated by a slash. It is not recommended to write the required positions separated by commas; this can be an alarming signal for an HR specialist - the candidate himself does not know what he is looking for.

According to Anastasia Lipskaya, it is best to indicate the desired position specifically for each specific employer.

“The “Goal” column always raises a lot of smiles and doubts,” the expert shares his experience. - This is such a special place in the resume - for the creativity of applicants. It’s better to delete it than to write something that might distract the recruiter from seriously analyzing your professional experience.”
General information.
Some applicants, fearing possible age discrimination, prefer not to indicate their date of birth in their resumes and leave the clarification of this fact of their biography until the interview. However, recruiters first consider the CVs of those candidates who have the largest number of matches according to the parameters specified by employers. Moreover, after carefully studying the resume, calculating the approximate age of the applicant is not difficult. “It’s convenient for me if the age of a potential candidate is indicated on the resume: I don’t have to waste time finding out how old the applicant is at the moment. Even when it does not contain the date of birth, it is not difficult to determine. If the resume is interesting, but age is not indicated, recruiters look at the date of graduation,” says Galina Nemchenko, senior manager of the Sales&Marketing department of a recruiting company Antal International Russia.
Work experience should be listed in reverse chronological order.
In addition to your age, this section should include your physical address and contact information (phone number and email address). If you only provide your home phone number, be sure to write when you can be reached at that number. For example, “call after 20.00.” However, HR people are also people with a certain work schedule, so it is better to give a mobile phone number so that you are available for prompt communication.
Education.
It is advisable to indicate both the abbreviation and the full name of the university, specify the faculty and the specialization recorded in the diploma, as well as the years of commencement and completion of studies.

Even if the first education you received is not specialized, you still need to indicate it. It seems that a degree in environmental science, for example, has nothing to do with your professional experience in sales. But from a recruiter’s point of view, a candidate applying for a middle management position without a basic education received in his youth looks somewhat strange.

In addition, indicating the first higher education is necessary to comply with the chronological principle in the resume, as well as as evidence that the person consciously moved along the path of professional and personal development to improve the level of his qualifications. Having a second education diploma will be a good sign for both the recruiter and the employer. It will serve as an indicator of the applicant’s interest in the chosen profession and his desire to improve his competence.

In the “Additional education” column you should indicate the trainings and seminars you have attended. However, you should not overload your resume with them - it is better to mention the most authoritative names of coaches and/or names of programs that match the profile of the proposed position.
Professional experience.
Work experience should be listed in reverse chronological order. Many recruiters automatically consider the first named job to be the last, and only then pay attention to the specified months/years.
Most recruiters, when reviewing applicants’ resumes, pay attention to the “branding” of the companies in which candidates have worked before.
Even if the last company where you worked is not as large and reputable as the previous one, you should not “swap” them. A resume is a fairly strict genre, and it is recommended to follow all its rules.

“There is no need to rewrite your entire work book if you have been working in the same area of business for the last 5-7 years,” notes Anastasia Lipskaya. - It is enough to indicate the last three companies, but here show yourself from the best side! Some applicants do not write the name of the company, based on some major considerations. By naming the company, you will show openness and confidence in your position. But, if for some reason you prefer to hide the name of the organization, then at least roughly describe it: industry affiliation, market position (leader/developing), country of origin, number of employees.”

There is another point of view on the description of professional experience. “Many foreign companies want to see a complete picture of a candidate’s professional growth; they do not usually look at an excerpt from a work biography,” says Galina Nemchenko, “therefore, a description of all available work experience is welcome. The last 10 years should be described in as much detail as possible, but when talking about earlier experience, it is enough to indicate the years, the name of the company and the position you held. All this will not require much space.”

When creating a resume on the portal Headhunter You may not indicate the name of only your last place of work, if at the time of searching for a new employer you have not yet quit there, but the names of all previous organizations must be present.

Most recruiters, when reviewing applicants’ resumes, pay attention to the “branding” of the companies in which candidates have worked before. Even in the conditions of today’s “staff shortage”, having worked in organizations known only in narrow circles, it will be quite difficult for you to find a job in a brand-name company. In such a situation, you should rely more on your own strengths, organizing your search strategy for a new job somewhat differently. It is very important that you are able to competently present your professional experience and achieved successes to the employer, but this can only be done at the interview stage.

The names of previously held positions should be given in full in the column provided, without abbreviations or the use of professional slang.

It is necessary to describe the functional responsibilities in detail, since in different companies the same position is often assigned different functions. You will save your and other people's time if you correctly describe what exactly was included in your work responsibilities.

Since we are talking about a management position, information about the number of employees under your direct subordination will be very important for the recruiter. Such details, as a rule, do not take up much space, but characterize the “territory” of activity, the level of responsibility and the scale of previously performed tasks.
Additional information.
Many recruiters believe that personal qualities (initiative, determination, resistance to stress, punctuality, and so on) do not need to be included in the resume, since in any case the candidate will demonstrate them at the interview.
You should not “overload” your resume with a list of all kinds of hobbies.
But it is better to mention skills that are not required by the position and functionality at the last place of work. For example, as a department head, you were not required to speak a foreign language, but you are fluent in English. Be sure to include this fact in your resume. The same applies to specialized computer programs. Do you know how to work in MS Project? Don't forget to note this!

But you shouldn’t “overload” your resume with a list of all kinds of hobbies - this will be unnecessary information.

As for recommendations, in Russia it is not very common to provide them in writing, but they obviously will not be superfluous. True, if they are requested, then, as a rule, verbally. “I would not advise you to indicate in your resume the contact details of people (directors or partners) who are ready to give references, because they may get a call at the wrong moment. It is better to provide their telephone numbers already at the second or third stage of negotiations,” advises Galina Nemchenko.

If you were a hired middle manager, then the director of the company should give you a description. If you have your own business or are a top manager of a Russian “non-branded” company, it is advisable to provide recommendations from Western partners with whom you have collaborated. The coordinates of colleagues are most often not indicated. If you need several recommendations, you can ask your immediate supervisor for help.
Desired salary.
In your resume, you can indicate the level of salary expectations or not indicate the desired amount of income at all. It is believed that candidates for management positions, as a rule, are approximately familiar with the situation on the labor market and can quite adequately assess their worth. And if a manager works for a brand-name company, then he often gets calls from headhunters who keep him updated on market events.

You can discuss the amount of compensation directly during negotiations with the employer. Its size in most cases will be determined by your ability to competently present and “sell” yourself. Due to today's huge need among employers for qualified personnel, companies, as a rule, are ready to offer an experienced manager a certain salary range and various bonuses based on performance results.

The “desired position” column in the resume serves as a kind of heading for everything that is written below. No employer or recruiter will look at your skills or achievements to find the right job for you. If you don't know what you want to do, no one will decide for you. Only after learning what kind of work you want to do, the employer compares it with open vacancies, and then begins to study your work history to understand whether you are suitable for the company or not.

Filling principles

It so happens that the desired position in a resume is its title (the word “resume” itself does not need to be written at all). It reflects the essence of the document, tells the recruiter what you want to get and what you can offer to achieve your goal. The more specific and obvious it is, the greater the chance that your resume will be considered.

Hence the opposite rule: even if the entire resume is written correctly, your professional skills and experience are enough to take the desired position, but an error has crept into the title, the likelihood of getting the job is reduced significantly. Or you may be offered a position that no one is taking, and the vacancy needs to be filled. The likelihood that it will coincide with your intentions is small.

To avoid mistakes, follow the following algorithm:

Determine your professional skills and qualifications;

Decide what kind of job that suits your capabilities you want to find;

Create a resume focused on a specific position, or several resumes if you are applying for different jobs.

Basic mistakes

Despite its apparent simplicity, since the position is the shortest paragraph on a resume, mistakes are often made in it. The most common of them: incorrect wording, inability to narrow your profile, the desire to show yourself from all sides at once, lack of understanding of what is required of you.

To prevent you from making these mistakes, let's look at examples that clarify what should not be in the desired position indicated on the resume.

Profile too wide

A manager, a top-level specialist, a store employee, a professional craftsman - these are all empty words for a potential employer. What kind of manager are you? In sales, in working with clients, in recruiting? Is a store employee a cleaner, a loader or a director of a retail outlet?

Be sure to specify the area of your skills: metal sales manager, Wordpress web developer, regional merchandiser-loader, hardware manicure and pedicure specialist. This way your employer will know exactly what kind of job you are applying for.

Full readiness

I will take on any job, I will consider all proposals - such formulations reveal an unskilled worker who has no skills in any field. And, probably, there is no desire to purchase them either. But there is a desire to get money.

Most companies don't take the time to consider candidates like these. If you are invited to an interview with such a resume, there is no chance of a decent salary or an interesting job. But if you were looking for a vacancy as a laborer, there is nothing wrong with such wording.

Handyman

“Seamstress, salesman, driver” or “plumber, economist, turner” - such lists of desired positions in a resume are unacceptable. Not a single employer (except for Pushkin’s Pop, who needed a “cook, groom and carpenter” rolled into one) is looking for a person with such versatile working skills. In addition, such a strong scatter often reveals an inability to concentrate on one activity, a lack of life goals, and strict guidelines. Few people manage to master more than two working specialties at an average or high level.

If you are truly equally familiar with different professions and are willing to work in any of them, write several different resumes with different desired positions. The likelihood of getting one of the advertised vacancies will increase significantly. The exception is related, related professions. They can be listed in one resume. For example, “administrator, secretary, assistant manager”, “journalist, copywriter, proofreader”, “driver, forwarder”.

You should not combine different levels of hierarchy in one resume. “Head of the sales department, manager of the sales department” is an example of a combination that raises doubts among the employer. Either you are not ambitious enough, or you are not confident in yourself, or you have had a bad experience as a manager.” Decide who you see yourself as.

Do you think that your professional skills from other areas could be useful for a vacant position? Be sure to include them, but in a paragraph dedicated to your skills, achievements or hobbies.

Exception: a jack of all trades is useful to a small company during a crisis. Then the opportunity to find a part-time worker to fill several vacancies at once is beneficial to the employer. If you are comfortable with this, send your addressed resume directly to the employer.

Student

Even if you are still studying or have just graduated from university, “student” or “trainee” is not a desired position, but your place in the service hierarchy. This needs to be indicated, but in the “education” section. If you have no experience, but only practical knowledge in some area, be sure to clarify it. “Intern PHP programmer” or “trainee hairdresser” will say much more about you than the banal “I’m studying” or “no experience”.

Confusion of concepts

Another possible mistake is inattention or misunderstanding of what they want from you. “Administrative work,” “marketing,” “sales” are not a specific position, but a branch of work. “Boss”, “employee”, “worker” are general concepts that are not tied to specific job responsibilities. The employer needs specific skills that you possess: beauty salon administrator, financial analyst, cashier salesperson.

Like in labor

This is the case when you want the best, but it doesn’t turn out very well. There is no need to copy the name of your position from your work book into your resume. There may appear ranks, degrees, additions, even specialties unique to your former employing organization. “3rd category graphic information input specialist” - such a position may not be available in other companies.

If you want to find a job that is as close as possible to your last one, rewrite the text in a more understandable language, for example, “Specialist in the formation of electronic archives.”

Emptiness

One of the most disastrous options is to leave the column about the desired position in the resume for which you are applying empty. Firstly, it shows some disrespect for the employer. It’s as if you are inviting him to decide for you what is best for you to do. Secondly, this is an indicator of unprofessionalism. A person who has mastered his specialty at the proper level will not forget to indicate this in his resume.

If the desired position in your resume coincides with an open vacancy, the employer will certainly consider your candidacy in detail. The chances of getting an interview, and then being hired, will increase significantly.

Listen to someone who has reviewed over 100,000 resumes throughout his career and really knows how to make a resume more compelling. Here, by the way, is my LinkedIn profile, see for yourself: mpritula.

But let's agree right away: no deception on your resume. Only honest information. How to make your resume really cool without cheating - about this in my life hacks.

Why almost perfect? Here are 10 tips I would give on this resume:

Take a photo on a plain background (white or gray).
Remove one phone. Why does a recruiter need to think about where to call?
Change your email to a personal one, not a company one.
Remove marital status.
Combine competencies and key experience. Reduce sentences to 7-10 words and format them as a list.
Remove recommendations.
Correct the misspelling of the word “company” in your last place of employment.
Reduce responsibilities to 10 lines.
Make the link short (bit.ly, goo.gl).
Reduce the total length of your resume to two pages.

Making your resume more expensive

Now let's talk about what makes a resume more expensive. I advise people on how to improve their resume. Representatives of a variety of positions send me their resumes: from ordinary salespeople to company directors. Everyone makes the same mistakes. There wasn't a single resume for which I couldn't write 10 tips on how to improve it. Below I have collected the most frequent advice that I gave on the resumes sent.

10. Combine many jobs into one

It is considered normal if a person works for a company for 2–3 years. If he changes jobs more often, he may be called a job hopper. Recruiters don’t like such people, since about 70% of customers refuse to consider such candidates. And this is quite natural.

After a year of work, a person only begins to benefit the company.

Of course, everyone has the right to make mistakes, and a good resume may contain a couple of places where the candidate worked for 1–1.5 years. But if the entire resume looks like this, then its value is very low.

However, it often happens that a person has changed several job positions in one company or moved from company to company within a holding structure. Or he was engaged in project work, during which he changed several employers.

In such cases (and wherever possible), I recommend registering this as one place of work, with one name and common dates of work. And inside this block, you can unobtrusively show a change of positions, but in such a way that visually, upon a quick inspection of the resume, there is no feeling of a frequent change of jobs.

11. Keep your resume to the ideal length

I believe that the ideal length of a resume is strictly two pages. One is too little, it is only permissible for students, and three is too much.

If everything is clear with one page - such a resume looks like a resume for a novice specialist - then with three, four, and so on pages, everything is not so obvious. And the answer is simple: the recruiter will look at only two pages 80% of the time. And it will only read what you indicated on these two pages. Therefore, no matter what you write on the third and subsequent pages, it will remain unnoticed. And if you write valuable information about yourself there, the recruiter will not know about it.

12. Share your achievements

If you remember only one sentence from my article, let it be about achievements. This immediately adds 50% value to your resume. The recruiter is simply not able to interview everyone who sent a resume. Therefore, the one who indicated his achievements and was able to thereby interest the recruiter will always win.

Achievements are your measurable ones, which are expressed in numbers, deadlines or significant qualitative changes in the company. They must be specific, measurable, impressive and relevant to the position.

Example of achievements:

In three months, I increased TV sales by 30% (store director).
Introduced a new product to the market in four months, which helped earn $800 thousand in six months (marketing director).
Negotiated with suppliers and increased the deferment on payments by 30 days, saving the company on loans - $100 thousand monthly (purchaser).
Reduced staff turnover from 25 to 18% through employee engagement (HR).

13. Tell us about your personal qualities

Nowadays, more and more attention is paid to the personal qualities of an employee when selecting candidates. If you analyze what exactly you will be assessed at the interview, then most likely it will be like this:

40% - professional knowledge;
40% - personal qualities;
20% - motivation (the desire to do this particular job in this particular company).

What are personal qualities? These are personal qualities of a person that contribute to the effective performance of their duties.

This includes: energy, openness, ability to work in a team, initiative, proactivity, and so on. Moreover, these are no longer empty words; at interviews, more and more often you will hear the following question: “Tell me about a situation in which you had to take responsibility and how you dealt with it.” This is called competency-based assessment.

Therefore, your personal qualities, especially if they correspond to those required by the vacancy, are extremely important. And if previously it was enough to simply list them, now this is no longer enough. Now we need to confirm their presence, so I recommend writing them like this (of course, you give your own examples, a mandatory rule: they all must be real and from the past):

Initiative: developed and implemented a strategy for the department to overcome the crisis when the head left.
Energy: My sales volume for 2014 was 30% above the department average.
Stress resistance: successfully negotiated with a client who refused seven managers, and concluded an agreement with him.
Leadership: conducted five management trainings and developed 10 managers from line employees.

Here it is important to write not many qualities, but qualities with examples. That is, examples here are more important than quantity.

14. Throw functional responsibilities from the job description into the trash!

Functional responsibilities that are indicated on a resume are usually the most banal and tedious thing. In 30% of cases they are copied from their own job description, in 50% of cases - from other people’s resumes or job descriptions, and only 20% actually write them well on their own.

I always recommend writing down responsibilities, not areas of responsibility, and describing them in the form of actions that you performed. This is similar to achievements, but numbers are not required here, responsibilities may not be so impressive, and, naturally, these are not one-time actions.

Before writing them, I recommend reading a few job openings to get an idea of what is worth writing about. Next, write down the responsibilities in order of their importance: the most significant ones come first (strategy development, introducing new products to the market), and the least significant ones come last (preparation of reports).

15. Sell your job title and company

Job titles and a list of companies are, in fact, exactly what a recruiter looks for in a resume in the first place. It’s like a buyer sliding his eyes along a store shelf in search of brands familiar to him (Nescafe, Procter & Gamble, Gallina Blanca, Mars, Snickers, Tide). It is on these lines that the recruiter forms the initial cost of the resume in his head and only then begins to look for details.

We write only the generally accepted name. If you work for Nails and Nuts LLC, which is an official dealer of Coca-Cola, then simply write Coca-Cola. Believe me, no one is interested in the legal name of the company.
We write the number of employees in brackets, for example: IBM (3,000 employees).
Under the name of the company, we write briefly in 7-10 words what it does. For example: one of the top 5 in the field of consumer lending.
If the company is little-known, but works with well-known brands, be sure to indicate this. For example: “Autosupersuperleasing” (leasing partner of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Honda). The name of well-known brands next to an unknown company will significantly enhance the perception of the company.

16. Remove template phrases from the “Goal” section

Immediately after your contact information in your resume there is a section called “Goal”. Usually in this section they write template phrases like “Maximize your potential...”. Here you need to list a list of positions that interest you.

17. Always check your spelling

Typically, about 5% of all resumes I review contain errors:

basic grammatical errors (there was no spell check);
errors in the spelling of foreign words (only Russian spelling is checked);
errors in punctuation: a space before a comma, a comma between words without spaces;
in lists there are different punctuation marks at the end of the sentence (ideally there should be none; a period is placed after the last item in the list).

18. Save your resume in DOCX format and nothing else.

Not PDF - many recruiters make their edits or notes (salary expectations, their impressions of the candidate, information that was obtained during the interview) in the resume before sending it to the customer; they will not be able to add them to PDF.
Not ODT - may not open correctly on some computers.
No DOC is a sign that the resume is from the past (pre-Office 2007).
Not RTF - usually weighs more than alternatives.

19. Use a resume file name that is convenient for the recruiter

The title of the resume file must contain at least your last name and preferably your position. This will make it more convenient for the recruiter to search for a resume on his disk, forward it, and so on. A little concern for the recruiter will definitely be noted. Again, this makes the resume a little more expensive in the eyes of the recruiter.

20. Show your value in your cover letter.

There are different opinions about cover letters. I always say this: a good cover letter can add value to a resume 20% of the time if it's written correctly. But it is not always necessary.

If you decide to write it, then here is a simple structure:

And if shown with an example, it could look like this:

Mistakes in your resume

Along with the secrets to increasing the value of a resume, there are things that make a resume significantly cheaper. Let's talk about some of them.

Nowadays, many job search sites allow you to download a resume created there. At the same time, they always add their logo and various fields for entering information into such a resume, which is not at all necessary for the resume. For example, gender. These resumes look like they're really cheap, so I don't recommend ever doing that.

21. Remove confusing abbreviations

When you work in a company for a long time, some of the abbreviations adopted in it already seem so familiar that you write them on your resume. But they are unfamiliar to the recruiter, so very important information is lost. Try to avoid abbreviations wherever possible.

22. Paraphrase cliched phrases

Very often you want to give in to temptation and stuff into your resume template phrases that can easily be found in any resume or job description. Avoid them as they are a waste of space to the recruiter.

Paraphrase, for example:

Result orientation = I always think about the result in my work.
Customer focus = the client always comes first for me = I put the client’s interests above my personal ones.
Communication skills = I can easily negotiate with any clients/colleagues = I can easily carry on conversations with clients.

23. Create a normal box

What distinguishes a professional from a child? A professional calls his mailbox by first and last name, and a child uses children’s words, nicknames from games and forums, and his date of birth.

Well, it is absolutely unacceptable to indicate your work mailbox. The recruiter in this case will interpret this nuance as follows: “I’m being fired from my job, and therefore I don’t have to be afraid and send my resume from my work email.”

24. Delete marital status, it is only of interest to visitors of dating sites

There is only one case when indicating marital status can play a positive role: if a young girl is looking for a job and wants to show that she will not go on maternity leave immediately after employment. In this case, you can indicate the presence of children.

The options “civil marriage” and “divorced” immediately reduce the cost of the resume, as additional questions arise.

The option “I have children” is written by very narrow-minded people, since all normal people “”. :)

25. Explain the work experience gap.

You can’t just show a gap in work. You need to write why exactly it arose. The option “I’ll explain at the interview” is not suitable, since the recruiter, seeing the gap, will think the worst that could happen.

If there was a maternity leave between two jobs, we write that. By the way, if the maternity leave was without leaving for another job, there is no point in writing it at all. I don’t even recommend highlighting this in any particular way during an interview.

26. Remove the end date from the last place

This is the only resume trick that can be forgiven. It is believed that a person draws up a resume before dismissal and after dismissal simply does not update this date. In any case, the specified dismissal date will work against you.

27. Don’t write reasons for dismissals

There is no reason why reasons for dismissal need to be specified. No matter what you write there, the recruiter will always have suspicions about your desire to explain the reason for your dismissal. Or maybe you're lying?

28. Don't explain details of your resume.

It is not allowed to write explanations, comments, footnotes, etc. in your resume. Only dates, facts, achievements.

The worst thing that can happen is the “Recommendations” section and the phrase “I will provide it upon request.” What is the point of such a section? A list of recommenders is unnecessary. Nobody will call them before the interview with you. And after the interview, you will be able to provide this list if there is a request.

30. Remove tables and large indents

Tables in resumes were adopted in the early 2000s. Then the entire civilized world abandoned them. Don't act like a dinosaur.

Also, don't take up most of the summary with very large spaces on the left side of the document.

31. Leave the first jobs for your grandmother

For simplicity, I'll just describe how it would be OK:

Last job: 7–10 lines of responsibilities and 5–7 lines of achievements.
Previous place of work: 5-7 lines of responsibilities and 3-5 lines of achievements.
Place of work before last: 3–5 lines of responsibilities and 3 lines of achievements.
Other places of work: 3 lines + 3 lines of achievements, if they fall within the range of the last 10 years of work.
Everything that was before 10 years ago: only the names of companies and positions.
If in your career there were places of work that were not relevant to your current position, feel free to delete them. For example, now you are a marketing director, but you started 15 years ago as an engineer at a factory or a salesperson at the market.

32. Remove vocational school

If you studied at a vocational school, college, technical school, and then graduated from a university, show only the university.

33. Don’t show your resume to HR specialists you know if you’re not sure of their professionalism.

We have many HR specialists who consider themselves gurus and give advice left and right. Find out how many vacancies they filled themselves, how many people are interviewed on average per day. What books have you read about recruiting? How many of them were foreign?

If you receive answers like this:

more than 500 vacancies;
5–10 per day;
more than five books (at least!);
Lou Adler, Bill Radin, Tony Byrne;

...then feel free to trust the advice!

I'm doing a little research, so in the comments to this post, write which of all the tips described was most valuable to you. This will help me understand your needs and write another cool article on how to sell yourself more during an interview.

P.S. Friends, thank you all for your comments. My colleague and I wrote a book where we shared even more advice. It is available at the link.

The article was visually designed by the genius of presentations

After all, if the desired position is indicated in the resume, the HR manager does not need to spend time looking at key skills to understand whether they can be useful for the company. Therefore, if you want to find a good job, do not leave blank spots on your resume and do not count on the recruiter to figure everything out himself.

To understand how to correctly indicate the job title, you should consider the most common mistakes that applicants make when filling out their resume:

1. Empty field. Sending a resume to HR with blank fields is, at a minimum, impolite. In addition, such a response will be regarded as evidence of unprofessionalism and therefore will go straight into the trash, giving way to others where the desired position in the resume is indicated at the very beginning of the document.

2. Incorrect wording. At first glance, it seems that there is nothing difficult about writing in the title of the document the name of the position for which you are applying. However, many people formulate it incorrectly, and each such mistake can cost you a successful job. Remember: the resume should indicate exactly the title of the position (NOT the field of activity, NOT the sector of the economy, NOT the position in the service hierarchy and NOT a general name).

Correct: “leading specialist of the financial department”, “credit analyst”, “chief accountant”, etc.

Incorrect: “lending to individuals” (this is not a position, but a field of activity), “material and technical supply” (this is a branch of the economy, and not a desired position on a resume), “financier-trainee” (this is just a position on the career ladder) , “employee”, “specialist”, “manager” (these are general words, they do not contain any useful information). Don’t leave the HR manager guessing with the tea leaves.

3. Versatility. Often, a candidate tries to demonstrate to the recruiter the breadth of his skills by giving him the opportunity to independently choose the desired position from a large list of proposed options. If you are not applying for the position of one-man orchestra, do not list all your credentials on your resume. An extensive list of diverse positions (for example, “logistics analyst/procurement department manager/designer”) will only scare away the HR manager.

4. A frivolous approach to job search is manifested in the words “general specialist”. You can be sure that the recruiter will appreciate this phrase. Who would want to hire an unserious employee into their team?

5. “I will consider any proposals.” No no and one more time no! Taboo! These three words eloquently indicate that the applicant is an unskilled worker without any specific specialty. Consequently, he does not have specialized knowledge and skills. Therefore, if a company is looking for a qualified specialist, such a resume will go into the trash next to those copies in which the desired position is not indicated at all.

6. Career growth with a question mark. Sometimes the applicant is already ready to climb the career ladder, but if the situation is favorable for this, he agrees to maintain his previous status. In this case, he can designate the desired position as, for example, “economist of the highest category/head of the economic department.” This set of options demonstrates the candidate’s lack of confidence in the desire to move forward, so the willingness to “play short” not only raises additional questions, but may even receive a negative assessment from the recruiter and the turn will no longer come to the interview.

How to indicate your desired position on your resume

Rule #1: When writing your resume, be sure to specify the title of the position for which you are applying. However, in any field there are professions that can be classified as related. So, if at your previous place of work the range of your competencies consisted of a voluminous list of job responsibilities, you can expand the search area by specifying several positions at once.

The main thing is that they belong to the same field of activity. For example, financial director/head of financial and economic service/head of planning and economic department, chief engineer/technical director, credit manager/small business lending specialist/leasing sales manager.

If you have skills in other industries that you consider necessary to tell HR about, briefly describe them in your cover letter.