A career objective is quite redundant because your resume will anyway show the development in your career and

the upward trajectory you’re on. Now, this line is

less readable because it is meant to be. You should opt for a font size between 10-12 and use basic fonts like Times New Roman, Helvetica, Trebuchet and Arial.

NAME Email: create a formal email for only this purpose| Phone Number : +91 | LinkedIn: preferably a customized link like [Link]
ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS & ACHIEVEMENTS
Qualification Year of Passing Institution Grade Rank optional)
Undergrad Degree GPA Top X%
B1 Level German (e.g) Relevant metric Distinction
AISSCE, CBSE (Class XII) All 5/ BoF School Rank X
AISSE, CBSE (Class X)
 This space will comprise of all your academic achievements in crisp and concise pointers. They include scholarships, olympiads,
merit certificates for excellence in academics, a school/college rank and a distinction in a relevant subject. Specify the batch
size in case you’re stating your rank or %ile. Include only those scholarships based on merit, not financial need.
 Academic accomplishments will also include research papers you’ve published/presented at research symposiums and hands-on
academic projects and professional thesis you completed as part of your coursework.
 You can use this space to highlight achievements in your minor subjects – especially if some aspect of it is relevant to the job
role.
 This space can also include online certifications held as supplements to your degree – but ensure three things; one, you should
possess the skill to perform what you learnt; two, it should be relevant for the job role you’re applying for; and three, it should
be at least a few weeks long. The last aspect is especially significant if the only learning of the subject matter was through this
course. If it lasted only a couple of hours, you might not be able to take up practical projects unless practiced extensively.

INTERNSHIPS / EXPERIENCE / LIVE PROJECTS

Use the “CEO test.”
Would the CEO of the company pay attention about this bullet point?
If the answer is no, see if you can explain the impact of what you did, or consider replacing it with a stronger bullet point.

Footnote: Technically speaking, the CEO will not care about any point, but what it means is to empathize with the hiring manager and reframe pointers if they are not
showing considerable impact. Now, set the alignment of the doc to “justified”. It improves readability and gives a crisp look to the doc. You can use Ctrl+J to do this.
Also, do not align anything to the right unless it is supplementary information. The eye naturally returns to the left margin once it’s ready to move on to the next line.

Position Held: Full Name of the Company X weeks | June ‘20- July ‘20

A one-line description about the company’s background/ niche/ industry or a mix of all.
You may also mention how you got the internship, especially relevant if it was a highly competitive process. This will precede the bullet points.

Before you begin writing, there are these two key factors to be mindful of –
 About the formatting for emphasis, since CAPS LOCK is harder to skim and bigger font size leads to inconsistency in
the content, use bold and italics.
 Most importantly, don’t use ‘I’ while describing your work.

 Roles and responsibilities using actionable words. Eg - Spearheaded and supervised a team of 20+ marketing interns
 Avoid task heavy content and list exact metrics and quantifiable outcomes/achievements. Eg - Increase in web traffic by 23%

 There are two ways of talking about your actionable work in a sentence. You can either talk about output first and impact
next, or vice versa. There is no hard and fast rule about which is more effective, but ensure to keep it consistent throughout.
Eg-
 Output-Impact: Researched and extracted data from a proprietary analytics platform to locate 6 new recurring
sales avenues; eventually generating sales of 2,00,000 in the first month for a telecom client.
 Impact-Output: Identified INR 2,00,000 in new sales opportunities through an extensive analysis of the headset
leasing market using Excel and proprietary analytics platforms for a telecom client.

 Use the space efficiently. If your bullet point is one line plus a few words that dangle onto the next, condense your language
to avoid this.  Don’t let it look like this.

 All of it should be power-packed with the right keywords. (Sprinkle in a little industry jargon from the company website and
job posting) Even though action words describing functional skills can be common, industry jargon for say, a Digital Marketing
role and a Business Analyst role will be distinctive.

Position Held 2: Full Name of the Company X weeks | June ‘19- July
‘19

Internship offer rescinded If your offer for an internship was rescinded, don’t worry. There are multiple other things you can
talk
about which will, believe it or not, act as acceptable alternatives, especially now. If you took up a project for a local business,
 provided pro-bono assistance to an NGO, were hired as a freelancer for a task related to the role you’re applying for, carried
out
a research project, or run a consistent and decently popular blog in the relevant broad domain, it is worth a mention. Virtual
internships will show proactiveness, but do not mention BCG ‘intern’ only because you completed a few tasks on InsideSherpa.
Instead, talk about it as an exposure in not more than one pointer, particularly if you have had no formal exposure in the past.

Is it even relevant? The Hiring Manager might only be interested in your technical skills and experience, but the HR Manager will
give other aspects a consideration and set you apart – and usually, the resume goes to a Hiring Manager through an HR Manager.

Where can I put my soft skills? Do not create a separate column for ‘soft skills’ (which are just a bunch of buzzwords) even
though
they might be important attributes. Try to demonstrate them in your bullet points without actually saying them. Also, please do
not specify your personality type (MBTI, or any other) unless specifically asked, which basically means, never.

In case you’re an incoming intern for a future date at a company/ of a role you want to showcase, you can mention “Incoming
Intern” with the same format as other internships and do away with the bullet points.

Focus on making the resume as relevant for the role as possible. Browse the company’s website and social media handles to
better understand the goals of the company, current areas of work and upcoming projects. Make a list, like literally make a
list of the ‘requirements’ for the job role – having it visually in front of you will help your brain to better remember the
situations
when you used those skills. Capitalise on your past experience and qualifications which demonstrate functionality in those areas.

Remember, every mindful edit is one less step for the hiring manager.

POSITIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY
 Be specific about your contribution. Use the CARL framework of giving Context, describing
situations where you took Action, the Result or impact of your contribution, and your Learning
which demonstrates your acquired and transferable skills.
Position Held
A transferable skill is an ability or expertise which is not specific to an occupation and may be
used in a variety of roles. These are tremendously significant especially if you have very little
College Society
experience and exposure in the field you’re applying in.
(April ’19 – Present)
 If the hierarchy of your society or club is unconventional, put out a pointer to explain the
If you’re not a part of any
college society, it’s okay. If reporting relationships and quantify the number of people you spearheaded, trained or led.
you’re in first year, you can
put a position held in school.  A few things you can talk about -
And if not, don’t worry. You
 The long-term collaborations you initiated or established (includes society collabs)
can complement your
academics with other activities.  The sponsorship raised and corpus utilised for events
 The research work you undertook and its specifications
The objective is to show a few  Marketing collaterals you curated (articles, posters, infogs) – eg. Increased the student
specific kinds of attributes like turnout by 30% by curating a marketing campaign for the promotion of the flagship event
management, communication,
 The kind and capacities of stakeholders you interacted and worked with
execution, empathy, proactivity,
creativity, adaptivity, initiative  The knowledge sessions you conducted and number of attendees
among other traits.  External speaker sessions and panel discussion you hosted
 Other aspects specific and exclusive to the kind of work your society engages in

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Now personally, I am not a fan of having an umbrella term, but if you do not have substantial/relevant things to expand upon under various kinds of co-
curricular
activities, going ahead with the common column is recommended.

Here, you can talk about –

 The competitions you’ve won – specify the name of the organizer, kind of competition (e.g – Marketing & PR Case Study,
Debate, Hackathon, B-plan competition, etc) your position (and number of teams/participants if information is available)
 The prestigious conferences or invite-only events you’ve attended – such as World Business Dialogue, St. Gallen
Symposium,
and other national-level conventions. If they’re not widely known, give a little contextual background.
 Featured articles or content relevant to the role you’re applying for.
 Speaker events or panel discussions you’ve been a presenter at. If you run a YouTube channel or podcast, that counts.
 Social Work you’ve undertaken – along with specifics of area of work, quantifiable impact and SDG it related to, if any.
 Sports activities you’re involved in – emphasize on team sports.
 Music/Dance and other performing arts you’ve earned a certified competency in, or have the skill to do it irrespective.
 OTHER IMPORTANT SECTIONS as per your profile (depending on relevance, put this before extracurricular)

Get it reviewed by – your seniors who can help you with jargon, an employee of the company who can comment on
whether it looks relevant and just anybody who’ll read through for tenses and sentence formation slip-ups. Since you
work on the resume so extensively, even if you’re staring right at the error, you miss it.

Once you’re done, save the document as a pdf and name as Name_Resume or Resume_Name and not NameResume.
Footnote: My guide is running into two pages but yours shouldn’t exceed one. As a general rule, you can fit in 5 years of extensive work experience on one page.