A Resume - What it is and Why You Need One?
While writing about resume, the first thing that came to my mind is the unique comparison of a Resume with that of a movie trailer. As the movie trailer is short, crisp and precise, similarly a resume is a trailer of the movie YOU. The way audience has 3 hours to judge a movie; a recruiter also has limited time to judge a person through his resume. So, basically, a resume is a professional description about you, your experience, educational background and some amount of your personal details. Lets see some of the pointers here:
What is a Resume?
A resume, is a professional document often used for job search, interview or for applying for a specific position to a company. Ideally, a resume has sections like an objective statement, summary of skills or experience, core competencies, employment details, educational background/training/certification and personal data.
In todays competitive market, resume has become a tool to get a job or at least to showcase your skills to a potential recruiter. A perfect resume is usually one or two pages document depending upon the length and breadth of experience.
During the start of this article, we have provided a meaningful comparison between the resume and a movie trailer and it seems quite interesting. Generally, we watch the teaser or trailer and decide/judge whether we would like to spend our time and money to watch the movie or not. The same goes with a resume.
Seeing a resume a recruiter decides whether he would like to call up the person for face to face interview or not. Now, when it all comes to a piece of paper, you need to ensure that your resume is a perfect answer to what the recruiter is looking for.
A resume is a marketing tool which advertises about your unique skills, qualification and work experience in a professional manner. It captures the essence of your career objectives, what are your strengths and potential abilities, your interests and equally provides insights to the recruiters on the possible avenues where your skills and abilities may be channelized on being appointed after an interview.
What a Resume Should Contain?
As the resume is a kind of advertisement of your skills, it should talk about you as a professional. By going through a resume, a recruiter should clearly understand one fact, and that is, what will be companys advantage if they hire you? If your resume answers this question perfectly, half of the battle is won.
Remember the core purpose of the resume is to grab a job and even before a job, to secure an interview which should later convert into a decent job. One thing you need to keep in mind is that your resume should have relevant keywords. For example, if you are managing sales, marketing, customer relationship, make sure your resume has these keywords. And not just keywords, you have to also ensure that those keywords are getting substantiated with facts.
Make every effort to keep your resume unique because a recruiter will be looking for something distinctive in a heap of many resumes. Achievements are something which sets your resume apart from others. Make sure you enlist your accomplishments and give it importance/weightage.

Why do You Need a Resume ?
Now the question arises why do you need a resume? There are various good reasons why you need a professionally written resume:
Now that we know what a resume is and why do you need one, lets get started.
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The article is Written By Prachi Juneja and Reviewed By Management Study Guide Content Team. MSG Content Team comprises experienced Faculty Member, Professionals and Subject Matter Experts. We are a ISO 2001:2015 Certified Education Provider. To Know more, click on About Us. The use of this material is free for learning and education purpose. Please reference authorship of content used, including link(s) to ManagementStudyGuide.com and the content page url.