Making a good resume
This is a lesson series about how to get a research position in industry by making a great resume.
August 12th, 2021. Pierre-Edouard GUERIN
The resume is the first thing the recruiter will read about you. I revised my resume multiple times already and continue to sharpen it. Here I describe the structure and overall basics tips to make a competitive resume.
Structure and Basics
- Contact information (mail, phone).
- Content is king.
- Never lie. Exaggerating a little is fine.
- Four sections:
- Education
- Experience
- Skills
- Others
1. Education section
- Quick summary
- Not a student: checkbox rather than highlight
2. Experience section
- Core of your resume
- Chronologically organized
- legal job title, company, time, date
- If the company activity is not well known, add a one line description of it
- The most recent job experience must have the most bullet points
How to write good bullets
- Tell a story in your bullet (Begin, Middle, End)
- What was the problem/opportunity?
- Begin bullet with the following words:
analyseddiscoveredinvestigatedtackledinitiatedfoundeddefinedadvised
- Begin bullet with the following words:
- How did you fix it?
- Middle bullet:
securedcultivatedbuiltdesignedunifiedrevampedlaunchedengineered
- Middle bullet:
- What did you do that went above and beyond?
- What was the impact and results?
- End bullet:
awardedearnedreachedsucceeddemonstratedcompletedboostedgeneratedimproved
- End bullet:
DON'T EXPLAIN WHAT THE COMPANY/LAB DOES ! Instead, focus on your impact and results. Whenever possible, use numbers to highlight the impact of your work.
How do I show impact ?
- As much as possible should have a number behind it
- This shows scale of your projects.
- How many team members?
- How many did this increase revenue?
- How many partners/customers?
- How many articles did you write?
- How many students did you teach?
- How much did the company or labs grow because of your work?
3. Skills section
- Skills is an optionnal section
- Avoid soft skills
- List sorted from the most known skill to the least known skill to the right
4. Miscellaneous section
- One or two lines maximum
- Just to give some flesh to your personnality :)