PREPARING CV FOR CAMPUS PLACEMENTS

CV plays an important role in campus placements. Some students do not put required efforts while preparing their resume and end up getting disappointed during the placements. A CV is a one-page document that sole purpose is to enable you to sell yourself to a company. It shows all your achievements and things that you have accomplished until now.

So we will go step by step for CV Preparation.

• Prepare your Master Resume: Master Resume is something that contains everything from your education, work experience, accomplishments, awards, certifications, projects, etc. in one place. It need not be one page. It mainly functions as a source to prepare your CVs for different profiles.
• Prepare One Page Resume: So now the task begins. You need to take specific points from your master resume related to the profile you are applying for. For example, suppose you are applying for a core profile in solid mechanics, your class project in data mining will be irrelevant as compared to a small project in mechanics.

Add only those things that are relevant to the profile you are applying for. Like most of the technology-based profiles do not care about your extra-curricular activities. In this case, try to add more projects instead of elaborating on the extra-curricular section. This is exactly opposite for consulting based profiles. So take special care of this while preparing a profile-based one-page resume. Some of the sections to include in a CV:

1. Write your name, email id, contact number at the top. You can also add the link to your LinkedIn or Github profile.
2. Start by listing your education in reverse chronological order. Mention the college name, department, year of passing, your grades, and rank (if decent enough). Class X and Class XII marks are also preferred.
3. Now add your scholastic achievements. It contains your academic achievements like scholarships, awards, selections at prestigious institutions, etc. You can also sport achievements. Make sure that scholastic achievements contain your highest accomplishments.
4. If you do not have major scholastic achievements, you can add your professional experience right after the education. Mention the relevant internships and work experience (if any) under professional experience. You should also explain the work that you had done during the entire period like the Objective, Approach and Result/Impact. These three things should definitely be covered in any experience.
5. You can add Positions of Responsibility (if any) after work experience. PORs show how well you can manage other things apart from your academic load. Some major positions of responsibility can be explained very well. You can start by adding Initiatives and end with the impact of your work. If you do not have any major PORs, do not write this right after the professional experience.
6. Any job opening requires a certain set of skills that must be possessed by a candidate. Technical Skills and Relevant Courses cover this area. You can also add online courses in this section.
7. Course Projects and Thesis work can be added if their work is inclined towards the profile you are applying for. I had not added my thesis work in my resume as it was not relevant to the data analytics profile.
8. If you have experience in any International Conferences, Research Publications, Foreign Exchange Programs, make a separate heading for it. These are the things that distinguish you from other candidates.
9. Last but not the least, extra-curricular activities. If you want to make this section extremely presentable, divide it into sections such as social, sports, conferences, quiz, literary, hobbies, etc.

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• Get it reviewed by people: A vital step, but often ignored by students. Get your CV reviewed by seniors, friends, siblings or anyone you trust who will give honest opinions. You should get your CV verified by at least 3 people.
• Re-read it: Sometimes there are small spelling errors or grammatical mistakes. Check them thoroughly. Go through each and every line at least 2 times. Small silly mistakes are a big turn off to a recruiter. Take care of them.
• Take a print-out of the CV: At times, margins are not right. So it’s better to take a print-out on A4 paper to check if how it looks on a page. After all, during interviews, the recruiter will be having a hard copy of your resume.

Some of the common things to be taken care of:

1. Do not leave too much white space on your resume. If you do not have many relevant things to write about, mention whatever you have. Just do not leave blank space. It should be a complete one-page resume.
2. Try to make points that are one-liners and cover at least 75% of a line.
3. Use words such as achieved, observed, recorded, attained, organized to start a sentence.
4. Use the same font style in the whole resume. You can use Bold and Italics in some places.
5. Start preparing the CV at least a month or two before the deadline. The review will also take time.

At times, CV can matter during shortlisting for interviews. So take extra care while preparing them. It should define you and present you in the best possible way. Best of luck. 🙂