You probably don’t know this but your resume carries a lot of weight, especially where your career is concerned. It has the potential to make or break your career, and as such, it needs to be fashioned with perfection. This means that you shouldn’t just have the right qualification, but the right personality as well.
You can always use an online resume builder to gain an edge over the competition, but that alone won’t be enough. The content in your resume has to be engaging – just using a jazzy design won’t be enough, the content has to complement it in order to truly bring out your personality.
Unfortunately, a recruiter spends just a fraction of second browsing through your resume. So even if you end up using a stellar resume format, the struggle is real and the pressure to create an impact and showcase your personality is at an all-time-high.
Mentioned below are the top 3 tips that you should follow to show outstanding personality in your resume:
Make the most of the “Additional Information Section”
When people start off by preparing a resume outline, they tend to ignore the additional information section in the end. They dismiss it thinking that this is a useless section. This is where they go wrong.
The thing is that most other sections of a candidate’s resume carry generic information regarding a candidate’s work experience and career trajectory. While these sections are highly important, they don’t give the recruiter a sense of your personality. By reading this section, the recruiter is unable to put a finger on your personality and your likes & dislikes.
This is where the Additional Information section shows the promise of showmanship. It is in this section that you have the opportunity to talk about your hobbies, and thereby communicate your personality traits.
Our suggestion: Give away personal details about yourself in this section that are not “too personal” but gives enough of your personality away to show that you’ll make a healthy addendum to the organization that you have applied in.
It helps if you do some research on your target company. Let’s say you’re scanning their website and you notice that your dream company participates in friendly tennis tournaments with their business rivals every month. And voila! You played tennis in college! Instead of this being just a hobby from ages ago, the sport has now transformed into a wonderful icebreaker during the interview, a great value addition for the company, and a stellar way to showcase your outgoing personality!
Personalize your profile summary/objective
No one will explicitly advise you to do this but you can flaunt your competence in your resume summary or objective by personalizing it.
For instance, the rest of your resume carries more than enough information regarding your career and key skills. They do not need to be repeated in your resume objective section.
However, that being said, we are not asking you to get into a detailed discussion of your likes and dislikes in this space. But what we are asking you to do is personalize it a little. For eg: you can talk about what inspired you to choose that career in the first place. This will not only give the recruiter a chance to understand why you are in your chosen profession but assess your attitude and outlook to life.
Do not talk about your religious or political inclinations in your resume
Your religious preference and political ideology are personal matters that have zero impact on your career. As a strict rule, they should be kept personal and you should not get into the terrible habit of mindlessly flaunting it in your resume. This is so because it does not advance your job application in any way. Moreover, discussing matters of religion and politics is not a professional approach to writing resumes.
An applicant who gets into these details is likely to be seen as unprofessional and unnecessarily politically-involved. This is not an attractive attribute in a job applicant.
Our advice? Stay far away from discussing matters of religion and politics in your resume.
Conclusion:
Recruiters often look for team players in a candidate who is just as equally ambitious. This is the personality trait that you should ideally have. You can demonstrate these personality traits in your resume by following the three steps that we have mentioned above. This will go a long way in enhancing the impact of your job application.