Making a good 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:
1. Education
2. Experience
3. Skills
4. 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: analysed discovered investigated tackled initiated founded defined advised
How did you fix it?
- Middle bullet: secured cultivated built designed unified revamped launched engineered
What did you do that went above and beyond?
What was the impact and results?
- End bullet: awarded earned reached succeed demonstrated completed boosted generated improved

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 :)