Your Resume Review

Hi,

Thank you very much for using our resume review service and for submitting your resume. I’ve read through the document you uploaded and I would make some observations, suggestions and recommendations under the various headings below.

Overall View

You’re clearly at an early stage of your career. However, this is an excellent stage to be considering how best to structure your resume and how to include more in it for the future, as time goes by. You have the beginnings of a good ‘story’ to your resume, but the issues I can see are:

• The resume is brief, so it is hard to stand out against other potential candidates for jobs or grad scheme places.
• The one page resume is good for your stage.
• Your introductory paragraph focusses too much on you and what you want, not what you can brig or deliver.
• Your soft skills are not well presented – these are crucial.
• Your personal qualities are mixed in with your skills.
• The keywords you need to show are generally absent.

The actions you can take are:

• Expand your opening paragraph and refocus on how you can bring or deliver value for your next employer.
• Include the keywords specifically relevant to the opportunity you are applying for. Use the ad or person spec as a guide, when you apply for roles or positions.
• Present more of your capabilities in that section, perhaps adding 3 or 4 bullet points.
• Continue to add content which builds the story of who you are and what you are capable of. Your aim is to show that you are one of the leading applicants, in comparison to other likely applicants who will probably be similar to you.
• Do whatever you can to add experience to your resume. Voluntary work is useful, but so is ANY work or activity you have undertaken or will undertake. For example, even working in a shop or coffee bar etc enables you to show more soft and hard skills that are potentially transferrable. Don’t feel the experience has to be directly relevant to your career, at this stage.
• Ideally show some unexpected added-value that is not asked for, but might give you an edge over the other applicants. You have extra language skills, but also a personal capability or a deep external interest may be of use here. This isn’t always possible, but it’s always worth exploring.
• Under ‘Skills Summary’ - Remove ‘good’ and ‘great’ as they are subjective. Keep the ‘excellent’ with the communication skills, but somewhere show an example(s) of how you’re able to say this.
• Remove the ‘Declaration’ unless this is ever specifically asked for. It adds no value and basically can be taken as read.
• Only include a photo if it is specifically requested or already customary in your field.

Towards these actions, some specific points are listed below.

Professional summary introduction

• Note comments above, and use the Ad or job spec as a guide for what extra to include in this section.
• After a brief opening paragraph, use one line bullet points to score against the requirements. This is one of the primary sections. (The others are ‘Work Experience’ and / or ‘Voluntary Experience’.)
• Ensure you add relevant keywords in this section.

Employment history section

• Ideally, create this section and populate it with what you can.
• Can you pull your project experience into this section to sell it better?
• Add a little more detail to your projects and dates / lengths of time.
• Look to add any more past experience you can, no matter how short.
• Plan to get more work experience, of any type.
• Always think about transferrable skills and soft skills you have developed or how you can develop the desirable ones in the near term.
• Always use the ad or person specification as your guide. Look at what they want, then showcase yourself as that person.

Other sections

• The categories you already have are good for your stage, subject to comments on changes above.

Visual Presentation and Organization

• Your basic layout and sequence of sections is good, but note the comments above.

Resume Writing

• Work to show more of yourself and what you can deliver if an employer takes you on.

In conclusion

• Your technical skills are strong. You should have confidence that you already have some skills and experience that is transferrable, but always think about how you can increase this and take actions to do that.
• You can’t win everything as so much depends on the ad, the reader and the specific competition so it’s all about relentlessly working to improve the odds in your favour with every word, sentence and bullet point on the resume.
• Make sure you incorporate relevant keywords. Pick these up from the ad. Prioritize these and make sure to show the highest priority ones prominently and in the correct sections.

I hope that helps you win the role you really want. If anything isn’t clear, or you feel you need further help to rewrite the resume to score more highly, do please come back to us, we’re always pleased to help.

All best wishes,

Jon Gregory

Career Coach and Resume Writer

Please feel free to email me with any questions. We’re here to help you put your best foot forward. Thank you,