Resume Writing: How much should you inflate your CV?

The past few weeks since I came back into the recruitment scene, I have noticed quite a few complaints from HR managers about inflated CVs. I thought it interesting to find out what they were concerned about. Fair enough, you read all about the right way to write a resume, what you should focus on, what you should enhance and how you should say the things you want to say. What you get in the end should be a well-crafted piece to market your skills and experience in your chosen field.

What actually happens? It seems that many of you may be better students than we thought! The latest concern among time-pressed recruiters is that the CVs submitted do not truly represent the candidate invited for interview. If you state that you were able to manage an extensive project from resource-allocation to budgeting, you have better make sure you can back that up in the interview.

I remember running screening interviews for a large multinational a year ago. The initial screeners would whittle down the field of candidates by reviewing their CVs by looking at their skills, educational backgrounds and extra-curricular activities. I was actually really amazed at the number of super-candidates emerging from that process. I was regularly slotted to interview students and experienced hires with quite the impressive list of achievements!

However, during the interview, I was often sorely disappointed. For example, there was a student who was President of many societies and organisations at his university. When I probed him further on his role and achievements within these positions, he told me that there were five members in total, and that he had organised two picnics to local parks. Even though I wanted to find some nugget of brilliance in this candidate by giving him the benefit of the doubt, I emerged from the session disappointed and rather annoyed that he had tried to cheat me as an interviewer.

Guan, the Chief Structural Engineer at a global luxury car manufacturer in the USA, was telling me about his own experience hiring yesterday. He was looking for senior designers who could hit the ground running, and he invited a candidate who seemed to glow in his resume. What the candidate did not know was that he was going to be tested in his skills. Despite an elaborate enhancement of his design experiences in his CV, when he was put to the test, he could not even get past the first half. When asked why he could not do as his resume dictated, he said: "I could do it, if you gave me instructions on what to do."

Needless to say, neither my university graduate nor Guan's experienced candidate got called back for a second interview.

It is important to learn the difference between writing a good honest CV and inflating it. If you do a good job of the former, you will get through based upon your own merits if you are right for the job. If you manage the latter - inflation - you may get your foot in the door for the first round of interviews, but your cover will be quickly blown, and it will leave a very bad taste in the interviewer's mouth. That will most definitely kill your chances of progressing any further, and even ruin the potential to keep a relationship going with the recruiter for future opportunities.

So be wise and honest when writing your CV. It is not fictional storytelling; it is an autobiography that should know the difference between who you are, and who you wish you could be. The reader will find out by the first chapter.

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Resume Writing: Know Which Resume Type Suits You Best

Don’t take your resume for granted! Any job-hunter worth his salt knows a good resume is the key to a job interview and, ultimately, to employed status. Aside from being a summary of abilities, experience and education, a resume should reveal your unique selling point to make a potential employer want to get to know you better.The secret of an irresistible resume -- it is suited to a specific job offer and addresses the position’s requirements. A tailored resume carries more impact than a one-size-fits-all.

If your resume is in need of a makeover, the first step to take is to organize information under specific headings such as education, work experience, honors, skills and activities. When you have it all on paper, decide on the proper resume format to play up outstanding qualities that make a perfect fit for the job opening. Take a look at the different kinds of resumes below and choose the one that suits your particular job-hunter profile:


This format is the most conventional and puts emphasis on an itemized employment history. A job seeker’s career milestones are presented in reverse chronological order, starting with the current or last position held. Each position should contain a description of responsibilities and a few bullet points of accomplishments.

This resume type is best for candidates with solid experience and progressive job history in a field or industry. It lends itself well to those with accumulated work experience relevant to the job offered and who want to continue along a similar career path.

Below is the suggested format, but be sure to customize it according to the job’s requirements:

1. Objective
2. Summary
3. Employment History
4. Education
5. Professional affiliations
6. Community Affiliations

Resume authorities agree that most employers prefer this resume style because it is based on facts and is easily digestible. It clearly demonstrates at a glance your career movements and progress over the years.


The functional resume is one that organizes work history into sections that highlight areas of skill and accomplishment. This resume variety allows candidates to give prominence to the set of skills and experiences they deem most relevant to the position. It may be a good choice for job hoppers, career changers and fresh graduates.

Job hoppers can use it to help make sense of seemingly disconnected experiences and show correlation between skills and accomplishments not made obvious in a traditional chronological format.

On the other hand, career shifters and recent graduates can utilize this resume type to display transferable skills and related achievements to convince employers of their suitability for the post.

This resume type often takes this format:

1. Objective
2. Summary
3. Skill Areas
4. Employment History
5. Education
6. Professional Affiliations
7. Community Affiliations

Be warned, however, that a functional resume could raise concerns that it hides information gaps and covers up spotty employment records. Employers might also encounter difficulties matching skills and accomplishments with actual job titles, dates and responsibilities. To avoid this, include the company name in the bulleted description of your accomplishments. Moreover, don’t omit at least a brief chronological listing of your work experience in your functional resume.


As the term implies, the combination resume tries to merge the best features of both chronological and functional types -- incorporating both a chronological work history and a skills and achievements section.

In this format, skills and accomplishments get top billing followed by employment history.

However, experts caution that the combination resume may not sit well with some employers, who may find these longer resumes particularly repetitious and confusing. This format can be a good tool, however, for someone who possesses strong editing skills.

Curriculum vitae
The curriculum vitae is sometimes used interchangeably with resume. But by formal definition, curriculum vitae refers to a detailed, lengthy and structured outline of educational background, publications, projects, awards and work history. It could run up to 20 pages and is usually suitable for educators and scientists boasting extensive academic and professional credentials and seeking positions in education or research.

Here is the recommended format for the curriculum vitae:

1. Education
2. Publications
3. Projects
4. Awards
5. Employment History

Electronic resume
Simply put, the electronic resume is one that can be sent by e-mail or on the Internet, and is specially formatted for scanning and searching by optical scanning systems. This format is the one frequently used when sending resumes through electronic resume banks and job sites like JobStreet.com.

The electronic resume can come in different file formats, but experts recommend the use of ASCII (or American Standard Code for Information Interchange) file formats as they are universally recognized by PC, Macintosh, UNIX workstations and mainframe terminals. The three most common ASCII (pronounced ASK-ee) file formats are plain text, rich text and hypertext.

Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages. Plain text is the most popularly used format for resume transfers across computer systems and is identified by the .txt file extension. Its main drawback is, of course, its no-frills, plain-look format, which can be remedied with the use of asterisks and other special characters to achieve a bulleted effect.

Rich text, identified by the .rtf file extension, provides more formatting options and is gaining grounds for its compatibility across word processors. Rich text is very convenient to use for existing resumes that are in word document or are sent as an email attachment. However, some destination computers may have email browsers that do not recognize this file format. If you are unsure about the read capability of a recipient’s e-mail system, you would do better applying plain text formatting.

Hypertext, also known as a web page, is identified through the file extension .htm or .html. This file format requires a web browser (like Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) to view your resume. A major setback to hypertext resume is that it relies on self-promotion rather than on the support of a large recruitment site.

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Resume Writing: 13 Tips to Writing the Right Resume

Coming up with a resume that makes jaded HR people sit up and take notice isn't as difficult as it sounds. The trick is to make sure it's worthwhile reading anytime.
How to come up with a resume that works--now there's a dilemma shared by fresh graduates and working stiffs alike. What exactly do you put in and leave out to convince the HR manager that you will be a wise addition to their company ranks? It's a tough set of decisions to make, akin to those you make when going on a blind date: You worry yourself sick over what to wear, what perfume to use, what to say to make the other person like you.

Writing resumes is, after all, fundamentally a marketing act. It's a way to advertise yourself and stand out in the marketplace crowd of similarly competent, qualified workers.

Forget about being modest. As career specialist J. Michael Farr, writing in the online magazine VidBook.com, says, "Your resume is no place to be humble."

How then do you design yours so that it comes off not as a pompous recitation of accomplishments the way a politician may do his, but as a compelling summary of your most attractive qualities?

Remember what your resume is not for: It's not meant to get you a job. Not yet, anyway. Its mission is to get you a job interview--which would hopefully lead to a job offer. But think of that as a long-term goal. First, your resume should be able to get your foot in the door by attracting the reader's attention enough to wangle an invitation for that first big look-see.

HR practitioners thumb through countless resumes in the course of their work. How do you make yours so fetching it warrants a face-to-face encounter?

Here's a 13–step guide to constructing a professional resume that gets your foot in that all-important door.

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Gather your materials. Begin by putting everything down on paper--contact details, work history and accomplishments, academic background, seminars attended, honors received, skills and proficiencies, personal details, etc. Don't worry about organizing them at this point; just make sure you don't leave out anything major, substantial, or relevant.

Pay particular attention to dates and places--say, periods of employment--as mistakes in these areas may leave an impression of sloppiness, or worse, fudging on your part.
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Start with your name and contact details. Your contact information should come right at the top of the resume after your name for easy and convenient reference by the reader. Include all possible contact details: postal address, landline and mobile phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail address. The last one is particularly important, because in these tech-savvy times, an email address shows that you are, at the very least, computer literate.
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State a job objective. A well-developed job objective statement "can be a useful way of demonstrating yourself to be a focused individual," says VirtualResume.com, an online job placement company. If you're responding to an advertisement, your job objective can be as simple as the position title (e.g., "Finance Manager").

But if you're aiming to keep your options open for other positions within a broad range of expertise, you can write a more general description of the work and corporate environment you want to focus on (e.g., "To apply my extensive experience in finance and administration to senior management positions in a highly motivated, forward-looking multicultural company").

Beware of generic objectives such as "employment in a position commensurate to my qualifications" or "to secure a regular position."
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Write a brief summary of qualifications. Cynthia Buiza, an HR and corporate communications officer at a Thailand-based NGO, says she appreciates resumes that provide upfront a concise summary of the applicant's qualifications.

"I get the impression that the applicant knows his strengths very well, but more importantly, that he can help me evaluate his credentials in a paragraph or so." Such small gestures of consideration, she says, go a long way toward distinguishing a thoughtful resume from the run-of-the-mill.
Your summary of qualifications should include:
o number of years of professional experience
o areas of expertise and career highlights (e.g., "at 26, youngest officer promoted to manager in bank history")
o unique skills and competencies (e.g., "part-time financials instructor at the SAP Academy")
o other information underlining your particular qualifications for the job

The summary's task is to make your credentials a cut above the rest. But make it brief; two or three sentences should do.
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Lead with your professional experience. Unless you are a new graduate, you should begin the body of your resume with an outline of your employment history, starting with your most recent work. List down all the jobs you've had, the company names, dates of employment, titles and responsibilities.

"Don't censor this list; include everything," advises VidBook.com. A fairly straightforward rundown of your professional experience emphasizes a strong and consistent work history.

A choppy one, on the other hand, where you jump from one company to another within fairly short periods, or have unaccounted pockets of unemployment, will inevitably lead to questions about your work ethic, your sense of stability, company loyalty, etc. That's why it's best not to leave a gap. Account for everything, even for time spent outside of professional work (e.g., "1990-1993—Full-time parent," or "1998-1999--Study and travel").
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Highlight concrete achievements. When you describe your professional experience, don't just enumerate your job responsibilities. A comprehensive job description will only pad up your resume; save it for the interview. Instead, emphasize any major accomplishments you had chalked up in the job. Use numbers, figures, percentages if possible.

At the September 1994 Professional Association of Resume Writers' Annual Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, USA (yes, there is such a thing), invited HR panelists were one in saying they searched for certain key words and phrases that provided a barometer of a potential candidate's qualifications. These words were active verbs that described the applicant as a results-oriented, dynamic individual, such as "accomplish, achieve, analyze, delegate, establish."

In other words, describe your job in the active, not the passive, voice. Why say, for instance, "Directly responsible for coordinating community programs" when you can say "Managed community programs with P12-million annual budget, 4 employees, and 3 office branches; streamlined program operations, increasing revenues by 20% over a period of 3 months."
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Emphasize your educational preparedness. If you are a new graduate with no professional experience, lead with your academic background, honors, and extra-curricular activities. Don't believe the fillip that grades don't matter in the real world; in the beginning at least, they do.

As Fred Damian, HR partner of Ernst & Young-Manila, explains, potential employers understandably give hiring priority to young people who have more or less proven themselves in academic tasks and school-related activities. Positions of responsibility in extra-curricular and community organizations are also reliable indicators of leadership and social interaction skills, he says. Thus, make sure they're all in your resume.

Leave off the negative points. If you made it to the dean's list in the first semester of your first year and never made it again, it might be prudent not to include the details anymore. That is, unless you're prepared to admit during the interview that after a glowing start, you sputtered to a lame finish. Your educational background should always be positive and purposeful, to encourage the thinking that you are well prepared for the rigors of the corporate world.

Include special skills and competencies. This is important, particularly in a highly competitive knowledge-based industry such as IT. In your resume, include the titles, dates, venues, and agenda of all your training activities and further education, whether formal or informal. Begin with the most relevant seminars. Be specific: don't just say "assorted computer training," when you can say "training in Visual Basic, SAP," etc. If you are fluent in more than one language, mention that fact, too.
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Either include references--or don't mention them. There are two schools of thought on this: One says it's necessary to include references. The other says this only lengthens the resume, and should therefore be available in another sheet of paper only upon request.

Damian, however, advises against using the standard "References available upon request" line. "It's either you mention references, or none at all," he says. "What's the point of putting in a header for 'References' only to say 'Available upon request?'" But if you do include references, include as well their complete contact details—especially telephone numbers and email addresses, and also the best time to get in touch with them.
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Use personal details sparingly. In the US where job-discrimination laws are wide ranging and explicit, "a potential employer has no legal right to request information about age, sex, race, religion, marital status, health, physical appearance, or personal habits," explains The Writing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Such statutes have yet to find root locally, but it is best to leave out as much extraneous (read: personal) information as possible from your resume, to free up limited space. These include names and occupations of parents, hobbies and interests, birthplace, etc. Reserve them for the interview proper.
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Be concise. Resumes are often read in 30 seconds or less so be brief, straightforward and to the point. Use bullet points to underscore important information. Employ paragraph breaks, lines, and numbers. A standard resume should be no more than two pages—three at most if you have extensive professional experience. Beyond that, your resume needs serious editing.
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Proofread! There should be no typographical or spelling errors in your resume. When using numbers, re-check decimal places or the number of zeros. Punctuation and date formats should be consistent. For example, if you write "2 February 2000" in one section, don't write "March 5, 2000" in another.
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Make it an easy read. Your resume should also be visually appealing; a carelessly printed, sloppily designed resume will reflect disastrously on you. Thus, make it easy on the eye with lots of white spaces, a font no smaller than 10 in size, and at most two conservative typestyles (such as Times New Roman or Garamond). Underlined and bold text should be used sparingly--only to highlight significant information or to indicate section breaks.

Another crucial point: Use a laser printer. With cheap laser printing services available even in neighborhood computer shops nowadays, there is no excuse for jet ink-printed resumes, which easily smudge or run off. Make sure that the printing is even, with no stray marks, splotches or blurred letters.

Finally, use only high-quality bond paper--either white or off-white. Don't experiment with flashy colors such as blue or green, or with fancy graphics and visuals; stick to the simple and straightforward.

One more suggestion: Once written up, show your resume to friends or colleagues. Listen to their comments and suggestions, especially on how easy or difficult it is to find important information at a glance. Then consider all that when rewriting the final draft of your masterpiece.

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Resume Writing: How to Write a Career Objective

If you must include an objective in your resume, make sure it’s not an afterthought-or a mere garnishing that does nothing to increase your chances of landing that job.
"Shoot for the moon, and maybe land among the stars." This is the way most career objectives sound in the resume of inexperienced job seekers. Vague. Uncertain. Aiming for everything and nothing. That is why, some experts warn, "If you cannot say it clearly, don't say anything at all." Why is this problem so common?

For most of us, a career objective is something thrown in-almost as an afterthought-when cooking up a resume. Something like a garnishing. An extra ingredient to spice things up. We think of it simply as an optional blank field we may choose to fill up with standard words in a standard format. Or, worse, with copied words from someone else's resume.

But if a career objective is just garnishing, as some people think it is, then why is it always placed on the crucial first line of the resume? This is the first statement the recruiter reads, after your name and contact numbers. Is that strategic placement just an accident? On the other hand, if this line is so important, then why the cavalier treatment?

The One True Objective
This attitude-and the resulting vagueness-seems to come from the fact that most of us don't really know what we mean by career objective. Reading between the lines of expert opinions, we begin to see that they may really be talking about two different kinds of objectives:

1. A career objective for your life; and
2. A career objective for your resume

Come again? Focus those glazing eyes, and let's take a closer look.

The dictionary defines "career" as "a person's advancement through life, especially in a profession." Job-hunting guru Richard Nelson Bolles is probably one of the staunchest proponents of the idea that we should aim for our one, true desire in life-and state that as our career objective. No two minds about it. For him, that objective is the whole point of the job hunt.

"Forget what is available out there. Go after what you really want," he advises boldly in the best-selling, annually updated book, What Color is your Parachute?

Does he differentiate between one's objective in life and the objective stated in the resume? Since Bolles is one career expert who does not think that a resume is a necessity, a statement of career objective specifically for a resume is not even a relevant issue to him.

In effect, he is saying that a resume is just an optional tool that a job seeker may choose not to use in the hunting process. It seems that if he has his way, he will do away with it completely. Go, figure. Still, he maintains that should a job hunter use one, he must make sure that he, the job seeker, "shines through" all the words he puts in his resume.

In short, the resume should be tailored around the job hunter's career objective-his life objective-not the other way around. "Don't be a job-beggar," he says. "Be a resource person." Developing one's career objective in this vein is a hunter-driven process, which begins and ends with what the hunter is truly seeking.

Tailor-Fit Your Objective to Your Resume
On the other hand, other experts take off on the common and very practical perception that we have to work with "what is available out there." What are the jobs on the market that a job hunter can apply for? Which jobs can fit, more or less, with his general direction in life? Which jobs can help him, in a step-by-step way, move toward his life objective.

For these experts, having several versions of a resume with several versions of a career objective is a real job-hunting necessity. Make sure that your career objectives will match the particular needs of the target employer, they advise. Makes a lot of sense, right? You do want a job, pay those bills.

Hence, it is important to clearly identify the parameters that the job seeker can work around-certain combinations of the following key elements, depending on what he wants to stress:

* The position (accounting, nursing)
* The field (publishing, computer technology)
* The hunter's marketable skills (human relations, mathematical abilities)

So as not to turn off those recruiters, heed these general guidelines for writing career objectives:

* Be concise (but not so specific that you limit yourself too much).
* Use verb phrases rather than sentences (Example: Seeking . . . rather than I seek).
* Be sure the objective is compatible with the resume.
* Demonstrate your value as a candidate and as an asset, not what you will get.

In short, it is a market-driven process of developing objectives. The main aim is to make a hit with at least one of the available positions, in one of the open fields, with some of the hunters' marketable sets of skills. The lay of the land is defined by what the employers offer and the hunter must fit his objective(s) within this topography.

Assess Yourself
The trouble with most career objectives we read is that they wobble between these two kinds of objectives, undecided. It is probably better for a job seeker to approach the job hunt one way or the other, but not somewhere in between. That is the surest path to vagueness and awkwardness.

In any case, though the experts differ on many things, they seem to agree on one thing. Always start with a comprehensive self-assessment. They are one in saying: Clarify your career objectives (whichever kind they mean) by clarifying who you are.

So, let’s get to the crux of the matter. After you’ve carefully assessed yourself, specifically your strengths and abilities, along with the tasks you have performed in previous jobs and how you intend to use them in the next one, what do you do next?

The next logical step, of course, is to labor at phrasing your objective well, making sure it does not sound “I-centered.” Consider this example: “A position as a sales engineer requiring superior skills in managing and monitoring sales and promotions of equipment to clients.” Now, contrast this with: “A position as a sales engineer, where I can enhance my skills in managing and monitoring sales and promotions of equipment to clients and eventually advance to higher positions.” The difference between the two is obvious: the first is targeted at meeting the prospective employer’s needs; the second emphasizes what the job seeker hopes to gain from, not contribute to, the prospective employer.

Keep in mind that similar positions could vary from one company to another. Therefore, you would do well to refrain from using job titles in career objectives. That way you don’t limit your chances of being considered for the job that you want. This is not to say that very specific objectives have no use. If you really want a job that requires very specific skills, then, by all means, make your objective specific-but not limiting. This means your objective can apply to other jobs even if you must specify the skills that you think make you the perfect fit for the job you’re applying for.

In the end, it is the job hunter's call what to aim for and how to state his or her career objective. Helpful resources are everywhere, specifically on the Internet. And the market is out there for the hunting. by Adora C. Balmes

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