Resume Writing Tips: Do's and Don'ts

By Sharmin Banu, Batch 88

Micorsoft Corporation

DOs:

• Format the resume by following some good career sites. For example, this site: http://www.career.vt.edu/JOBSEARC/Resumes/formats.htm has good samples. Choose the one that fit your profile.
• No need to put reference at this point
• Make sure most of the important facts can be viewed from the first page (in the computer monitor). For example don't use 4 lines to explain your CGPA, just use something that is easily understandable, like, in the top 10% in my class or whatever sounds good.
• If you are yet to graduate it is enough to say when you will be graduating.
• Use differnt versions for differnt purpose. For example the one for GRAD scholarship should be differnt from the one when looking for a job.

DO NOTs:

• personal info (Date of birth, Father's name, religion, etc)
• Picture of the candidate
• SSC/HSC result

General advice

For Job interview the first three/four sections should be:

Education, Technology, Experience/Projects, (relevent courses - if you are a recent grad or still in school). Some people list "technology" as something else (can't remember right now), where they put tecnology as well as other skills like (Communication, team player etc).

Education - Describing your degree, and year of Graduation, Result For example:

Ms in Computer Science, Some University, <City, Country>, April 2006
BS in Computer Science and Engeneering, Bangladesh University of
Engenrring and Tech (BUET), Dhaka, Sept 2004, CGPA 3.7/4

(optionally mention anything like Deans list, top 10%. Do NOT
PUT "among top 35 students". It doesn't give any useful info. Also note that if the GPA doesn't look too atractive you can omit if
you like).

Technology :
Here put some list of programming language, network protocol, DBMS etc. May put years of experience if it is one year or more. You may make 3-cols to fit in. No need to put anything if you only wrote a "Hello world" program in that language.

Professional Experience / Projects -

If you have any professional experience, Start from the latest like Sofware Engineer, XYZ Company (oct 2002 - present) Then list in bullets all the projects you did there

For example:
- Designed and developed a client server based library information system for a ABC university in Dhaka. Used C++ for front end and SQL2000 for backend. May be some more details.
- Did custmer support and trouble shooting for a Oracle Database based inventory management system. In charge for fixing bugs within 24 hours when customer is blocked.

If you do not have professional experience then you should have a section on, "Relevent courses". List all the courses that should be attractive for the company/Job you are applying for.

(Recently I saw one resume that has an MS in CS but no course on Software Engineering. I was doubtful about the canddate. When we did the phone screen I found my doubt was right, he didn't do well in that interview.)

Also make sure you have one section called "Projects". In that section, you should list your class projects, Thesis etc.
Description should contain what the system about what technologies you used etc. Mention if you were the team lead.

Bottom line: we want to see what technology you know, where/how you applied those all such things.

Do not clutter your resume with permenent and present addresses. It's enough to use one address.

When I say resume should be concise, I don't say a half page is enough. If you did a BS in CS how it is possible you have a half page resume! Min - one page Max-two page.

Please spend some time researching on good resumes (ther are lots of them available in the internet). Get it reviewd by someone who knows. It is your chance to say what you are, if it looks sloppy that make you look like that. We sure don't want that, right?