If you have just graduated from a college or university and are looking for a job, this article’s for you. I will deep dive into the secret technics you can use writing your first resume. Employers are often looking for newly-graduated candidates but what can you do to appear differently from others and make them chose you?

New Graduate Resume

In preparing your first resume, you need to convince an employer that you can do the job. To do this, you need to highlight the relevant experiences.

ATS

Have you ever heard of ATS? Let me tell you why it is important. ATS or Applicant Tracking Systems are popular these days powerful software solutions implemented in place for candidate filter and selection. If you would like to kick-start your career powerfully with an internship, an apprenticeship, or a Junior Role in an International well-known company, you have to think ahead about the ways to get yourself through the first barrier of ATS.

As a Career Consultant, I get resume questions from almost every client, and my #1 tip is always the same: Before you start writing your resume, make a list of the keywords that are important to your industry and function. Recruitment is a time-crunch industry, and recruiters rarely read resumes in detail. It takes them 20 seconds at most to read it through.

Beyond that, resume keywords are critical to writing an ATS resume.

You may have heard of search engine optimization (SEO). It’s the careful mix of keywords that writers, marketers, and website designers use to tell search engines what their website is all about.

In 2018, resumes need SEO, too.

The keywords you use throughout your resume are what the applicant tracking system uses to assess whether your experience matches the job.

TO DO: Research the occupation and industry so that you can include words specific to the job because employers will scan your resume looking for these keywords.

Your First Resume Strategies

Prepare more than one resume if you are looking for different jobs. I cannot stress the importance of this step enough. You need to target each resume to the job to demonstrate to the employer that you both understand and can meet their needs.

Tips and Tricks for your First Resume:

• Place the “Education” section before “Work Experience” if you lack related work experience but have recently completed relevant education
• Under “Education”, you may want to emphasize grades, relevant courses, special projects, assignments, theses, major research projects, awards and scholarships
• Use a “Related Experience” heading to list internships, co-op placements, volunteer and work experience While your previous job titles may not be directly related to your target position, there may be relevant accomplishments and duties that you can highlight
• Create a new professional email account that is not a school account. Use this account for job search only, to help keep you organised. Use an abbreviation of your name and full surname, for example: nbobro@gmail.com

Send it to your friends that are looking for a job. It may help them finding what they want!