Why Choosing the Right Resume Format Is Important?

If you present a well-written resume, you won’t have to make much effort to grab the attention of any hiring manager. Once you manage to do that, the remaining steps that need to be followed in order to get a job will become super easy.

Formatting is crucial to make a resume reasonable and professional. Here, you must note that formatting should not only involve correcting the alignment or choosing the right font. While those components are also crucial, your focus should be primarily on structuring your resume correctly.

About Resume Formats

You can adopt several methods of formatting your resume. However, before you choose a particular method, you must gather enough information about the art of resume formatting.

Formatting requires the creator to deal with a series of components including overall appearance, design layout, structure, fonts, and last, but not least alignment. Depending on your needs and preferences, you may highlight or bold certain parts in your resume. Additionally, you can even divide it into separate segments.

You can check here and explore some useful resources. You can go through several samples and templates for you to take a cue from. Indeed, there’s nothing called a perfect resume format. However, your resume format should boast certain features to allure your potential employers. If it has the correct format, your prospective employer will not need much time to scan through it as all the crucial information will be clearly visible. A wrong format is sure to inevitably fail to grab the immediate attention of the recruiter. This often leads to rejection.

Options Available For You

You might not succeed in grabbing the consideration of the hiring manager in case you do not pick an appropriate resume format. The vital reason why so many resume formats are in use is that each one helps in highlighting the professional attributes of various kinds of applicants. If the hiring managers or potential recruiters are impressed with your resume at the very first glance, they will show interest even in reading through the additional segments.
Another most preferred option is to consider the chronological format.

The reason behind its popularity is that it matches the needs of many job seekers that have a conventional academic background and career paths. This specific format can help you even when you are looking to change your profession. To put it bluntly, this particular layout never fails. This one is undoubtedly the best bet for a marketing profile resume, a medical professional, an engineering resume, etc. Avoid this format in case there has been a big gap at some point in your academic or professional life.

Another most popular resume format is the hybrid format. The benefits this design offers are similar to the ones offered by the chronological format. However, this one scores more impressively when it comes to flexibility. Other than helping job seekers belonging to various industries to find jobs, a hybrid resume also allows people to highlight their skills that are outside their domain. Choose this format in case you are making plans to change your profession or are having some gaps in your education or experience.

The functional format is another popularly chosen format. This format can be a good choice if the two other options didn’t. Opt for this particular format to create your resume in case of being a fresh graduate without any work experience. This format will also work in case you are looking to enter the professional world after a break.

The ATS Factor

Companies looking to fill up vacancies receive hundreds of thousands of applications every day. This makes managing resumes and reading through each one of them extremely difficult. Employers have come up with a perfect solution to this problem. Most of them have started to use Application Tracking Systems (ATS) to sort, filter, and rank all applicants.

ATS analyzes in a particular method. It works in a way, which helps the hiring companies to identify specific keywords for spotting the suitable candidates in order to fill the vacancy. This means in case you want the ATS of your prospective hiring manager to pick your resume, it is essential that you incorporate the right set of keywords that can usually define the skill sets you possess. Without those keywords, your resume will be treated as a bank sheet.

Selection of the appropriate resume format will increase your probability of getting hired by making it more search-friendly. Thus, the odds of being shortlisted by ATS will increase significantly. Find out how you should format your resume.

Start by mentioning your name. Thereafter you can add other important details like your contact info. Mention the number on which you can be reached, your mailing address, as well as your email ID. Your mailing address must add your city name, the state you reside in, along who the zip code. Remember, most recruiters want local applicants.
ATS picks various facts and figures to generate a unique digital job profile for each job seeker. To do that perfectly, the program needs data from different segments of the resume. Add headings to every segment and make sure you are not using any ambiguous jargon. ATS cannot identify such terms.
Arrange your work experience chronologically.

• The name of the company
• Job title
• Location of the Company
• Joining date and release date
• Use Docx format because of its ease of scanning by ATS than the PDF format.
• Make use of the font Serif or Sans Serif. Try to keep the font size 12 points. However, use a bigger font size while writing your name.
• The width of the margin must be maintained between 0.5 and 1.5 inches.

Other than picking the right format, you must also ensure that the content of the resume is able to match the job description. You must understand that the requirements vary from one job posting to another. This makes it mandatory for you to amend your resume whenever you plan to switch your existing job.

You may need to add points or might need to eliminate some to ensure the information provided by you appears to be relevant to the hiring manager. Number of pages in a resume also matters. There are certain job roles that demand some with more pages, while for some just a single-page resume is enough. Do your research to find out what the vacancy requires and edit your resume accordingly.