what's up everyone kenji here and in this video i thought i'd walk you through how to write the best
resume you can possibly write just to clarify here some countries call it a cv but for the purposes
of this video they mean the same thing so does a perfect resume even exist and the answer is no
if you go on the internet and type perfect resume you'll see all sorts of resumes from career
experts and some have the name on the center others have the name on the side some have callers
some even have summaries while others don't well that's confusing and the reason it's like that
is because there's no one-size-fits-all when you think of your resume as an advertisement which is
basically what it is you're advertising yourself to a company there's actually many different types
of ads right there's billboard ads there's social media ads there's tv ads and so on and so forth
and some people prefer one type of odds whilst others prefer some different types of ads
and so it's a bit of the same with the resume and that's why even experts have differences
but there are some best practices that you can follow to maximize your chances of getting to
the next step in the recruitment process that's what i want to talk about in this video i've also
attached a resume template in the description it's completely free for you to use i'm not looking for
your email or anything like that but if you find it useful i would appreciate it if you can smash
that like button and hit that subscribe as well alright let's get into the video so starting off
with the basics for the formatting just keep it simple so a dark color and using the same font
throughout so keeping it consistent is probably best if you are in a more creative field say then
it might make sense for you to add some colors in there and make it more personalized but if you're
not it's really a safe bet to just go with a plain dark color when it comes to length the
recommendation is just one page unless you're in academia or you have a lot of work experience then
you might want to make it longer but if you're a student or you're recently fresh out of college
then you don't need anything more than one page as for the structure of the resume if
you're a student this is the one you should follow so first off you'll have the contact
details then you'll have the education section after which you'll have the work experience
then the leadership and awards section and finally you'll end with the additional information section
on the bottom now if you're an experienced professional and it's been a few years since
you've left education then the education section is no longer going to be on the top instead you're
going to bring it down and work experience is going to go on the top right and don't
worry if you don't know what to include in the sections we'll go over that throughout the video
but overall the idea is that you're going to have whatever is taking up most of your time
on top right so if you're a student obviously education is going to go up top well if you're
a full-time worker then your work experience is going to go up top right now this is probably
the most common structure of a resume but like we saw earlier when we looked up the perfect resume
there's actually many right answers so for example if you don't have any leadership experience or
awards like it was in my case i personally just took it out and if you're curious to see what my
resume looked like specifically the resume that got me an internship at goldman sachs
i made a video just on that so feel free to check it out as well alternatively if you have very
little work experience because you're very young for instance and you can't really fill that whole
page in then you might want to write something like a summary profile on the very top where for
something like three sentences you're going to talk about your key skills and accomplishments
overall you have full control of what you put in your resume and you want to make yourself look
as attractive as possible right so it's up to you to add some extra sections or emit some sections
depending on what makes you look best right so for instance in my goldman resume that i showed
earlier there i also added a skill section for adding some languages and some computer skills
which i felt like i wanted to highlight so it's really up to you as to what you decide to put
so let's get into the details of each section okay so first off the contact details and this one's
fairly self-explanatory in big you should have your name it can be on the side or it can be in
the center that doesn't really matter too much and underneath that you might want to add your address
your email and it should be a professional email it should be something like um kenji's the goat
gmail.com or anything ridiculous like that and then next to it you can add your phone number
i've also noticed that an increasingly popular thing to do there is to add your linkedin profile
so basically leave the link up there i'd suggest you do so if you feel like your linkedin is going
to enhance your resume alright so moving on to the education section and here the more recently
you've been in education the more detail you should have in it so if you're a student or
you're a recent graduate you should obviously have a lot more than if you graduated say 10 years ago
right so you should include your university name on one side and then on the other side you'd have
the location as well as your expected graduation date in month and year format also you want to
include bullets for your major your minor or your concentration if you had one as well as
for your grades and at the same time if you've managed to reach the dean's list for instance
you can also add that in there as well next up under education you can also include your high
school or your exchange if you did one overall i'd suggest including these if you feel like you don't
have much to talk about in in your later sections and your resume feels empty you can obviously talk
more about the high school and the exchange rate lastly you can also include a relevant coursework
section if you find that the job description says that they're looking for people that have taken
financial accounting then you can obviously put it in there and try to highlight it like that right
all right so moving on to the work experience section and here you want to list out your jobs
in chronological order such that your most recent one is on the top and similar to the education
section on one side you want to include the name of the employer as well as your position and then
on the other side you want to include the location as well as the dates that you were working there
so for the description of the job i suggest you use bullets instead of using full sentences
and you want to use action verbs so verbs like i created i conducted i researched other things
like that that just get to the point in the end and at the same time if possible you want to try
to quantify things just so the recruiter gets more context as to how big or small
what you did was right as an example instead of writing i was responsible for creating a marketing
campaign to sell more products you should say created a marketing campaign that increased
sales revenue by 40 quarter and quarter it's to the point it's got action words and it quantifies
and that just gives the recruiter more information and perspective than just saying
i sold more products than before another good tip for what to write in the bullets is to use the xyz
formula and let me explain it means i accomplished x as measured by y by doing z if you're a sales
rep for instance it could be something like group subscriptions by 20 month a month by pitching new
product features where in this case the x the accomplishment is the subscription growth the
measurement is the month of month so 20 in this case and lastly the pitching new product features
is the doing and if you feel like you have no relevant work experience say because you're still
very young it's still better to put something like bartending or tutoring or really anything at the
end of the day it does show that you're motivated and you're trying to do something right next up we
have leadership and awards and this can really be anything from winning a chess competition to being
a president of a club to doing volunteering work or it can even be more educational stuff like one
might be taking a public speaking seminar or going to a conference other things like that it is very
vague as a whole leadership in awards so yeah just try to use it to your advantage right and the same
xyz framework can also apply here so let's look at an example if you're the president of the school
math club one bullet could be increased the club's national ranking by 25 positions after winning the
municipal tournament by developing a rigorous calculus training program and again like i
said earlier if you don't have much to say in this section you can just omit it you don't necessarily
have to have it there it's really about what makes your resume look better and lastly we've
got the additional information section and here there's really no clear guidelines you
can include things like the languages you speak your interests your extracurricular activities
or any links that you think are relevant and this section is often overlooked in my opinion
this is basically if you have two competitive candidates it's what's gonna set you apart if
you both go to the same university for instance basically if you have something in common with
the recruiter they're more more likely to talk to you right so i wouldn't neglect this area at all
i would properly think about it the last thing you want to do is is put some stuff that
is probably going to sound like a lie like say i love studying i love analyzing data and i love
reading my textbooks obviously no one's going to believe that and it's not going to make you
feel very personable right and one resource that i think you should be using to your advantage if
you're still a student especially has to do with the career center at your university so
if you don't know your university typically hosts one-on-one sessions that are completely free with
a career counselor which is going to be the person that can give you some tips on how to structure
your resume cover letter and so on i study at cornell university for instance and this is what
their career center has to say here it says come see us for help with your career exploration your
resume and so on so it's definitely a resource that i think you should be using if you're still a
student after all when you think about it from the university's point of view if their students are
going to the best jobs out there it's obviously going to enhance their reputation as a university
too right so it's kind of in their interest to help you out but if you're not a student you can
also still download some of their guides so for instance harvard university has a guide on how
to write a resume and a cover letter so make sure to check that out at the end of the day there and
they're a credible resource obviously and it's completely free and the big elephant in the room
should you update your resume every time you send out a new application to be honest i personally
did not i actually had around three different templates basically you want to have a template
for each industry that you're interested in right like say you're interested in in accounting you're
interested in real estate and you're interested in marketing so you'd have three different templates
based on that because at the end of the day if you're applying to say an accounting role at
pwc or an accounting role at deloitte the job description and the requirements are actually
going to be almost the same so i personally don't think it's it makes sense to to update the resume
each time it's just going to take you a long time i know that a lot of say counselors and
experts say that it's worth updating it every time but i personally thought it just took too long
so yeah that's all for this video if there's one key takeaway here is that you have full control
of the content of your resume so try to make it seem as attractive as possible that's all for
this video if you enjoyed it feel free to like and subscribe and i'll hopefully catch you on the next