How to Craft a Job-Winning Resume
How to Craft a Job-Winning Resume
Creating a Resume is the first step in applying for any job role. Summarizing your education, skills, projects & experience is a difficult but necessary task. I’m writing to share a step-by-step process to craft an impressive resume for data science roles.
Follow along with this video to create your resume step-by-step from scratch: https://youtu.be/h6XRPmSBEM4
How Recruiters and Employers Evaluate Resumes
Recruiters and employers often look at dozens, if not hundreds of Resumes every day
While screening, most recruiters spend less than 20 seconds on a Resume before rejecting the candidate
Your Resume needs to be clear & concise and should convey your best qualities at the first glance
If you have all the skills for a position, but aren’t getting shortlisted, your Resume might be the problem
Follow these five steps to craft an impressive resume.
Step 1: List all your education, skills, experience, projects & accomplishments
Create a Google Doc and list your entire professional history in chronological order
This includes education (bachelor’s, masters etc.), key projects, work experience, online courses etc.
The idea here is to be as detailed as possible, you’ll pick from this doc while creating your resume
Spend a few hours or maybe even a couple of days on this to create an exhaustive list
Step 2: Research job listings and identify the right roles to target
Read through job listings for your target role on sites like AngelList, Glassdoor, LinkedIn jobs etc.
Fill out this spreadsheet to identify the top skills required for each role (create one sheet per role)
The roles you should target are the ones for which you already have most if not all of the skills
If you don’t have sufficient skills for any of the roles, you need to focus on learning & doing projects
Step 3: Carefully craft a 1-page resume for the role(s) you’re targeting
Pick relevant points from your bio document and craft a 1-page resume for each target role
You need just 4 sections: Work Experience, Education, Skills & Certifications and Projects
In each section, include crisp & clear bullet points to provide evidence for one or more of the required skills
Reorder the sections to ensure that the first half of the page is the most impactful
Step 4: Polish your resume & share with friends/colleagues for review
Proofread your resume carefully and fix typos or missing/incorrect information
Highlight important keywords (tools, techniques, libraries, skills) to ensure that they are visible at the first glance
Share the resume with your friends for review. It’s ideal to get reviews from people who are working in the target role
Step 5: Make minor modifications while applying and keep iterating on your resume
For each job you apply to, read job descriptions carefully to identify if your resume is suitable for the job
Sometimes it might help to reorder sections or add/remove/modify information based on the job you’re applying to
If you’re not getting shortlisted, set aside some time every week to review and improve your Resume
The important part: Don’t lose heart and keep improving! It’s not enough to just improve your Resume, you need to continually improve your skills and build great projects.
To acquire the right skills for a data science role, join our upcoming 20-week bootcamp:
Part-Time Data Analyst Certification Bootcamp | Jovian
The bootcamp consists of 7 courses, 12 assignments, 4 real-world projects and 12 months of career support, which includes a 1-on-1 resume guidance & review.
We’re offering a 14-day free trial, so you can attend the first 2 classes free of cost. We’re also offering a Pay-After-Placement option to support learners who can’t afford it right now.
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