When was the last time you applied for a job? If you’re finding it more difficult to land a job in the Philippines, you’re not alone. Almost 70% of Filipinos struggled to find a job in 2023, and that number isn’t improving in 2024. With the job market so competitive, submitting your application to job listings isn’t enough to get you an interview these days. What it takes is a standout resume to get you noticed, and before that, you should know how to make a good resume.
Why Does A Good Resume Matter?
Unemployment rate is at 4.1% in May of 2024, higher than prior months. Though the government aims to create 500,000 jobs annually, it’s only been able to meet less than 30% of that target. With unemployment high and job creation so weak in the Philippines, the competition in the job market is tight, with job applicants at the mercy of recruiters and employers.
As a job applicant, this is the time to get creative and optimize your chances of getting noticed. And the best way to do it is by creating a good resume that makes you a standout applicant!
What Is A Good Resume?
A good resume is a summary of your relevant experiences and skills that make you a right fit for a job an employer is hiring for.
Not to be mistaken with a curriculum vitae (CV), though typically used interchangeably, a resume should only contain details that are relevant to the role you’re applying for; this means not including your entire work history, and not detailing all the tasks you’ve done for each role.
And what makes a good resume is its ability to convey to the employer your eligibility for the open position!
How To Make A Good Resume?
Arm yourself with the best tool any job applicant can have – a good resume. We’ve identified all the important elements of a standout resume according to the hiring managers at Bossjob to give you the best chance at standing out during your application process or you can try out this AI resume builder for immediate results!
Ordered Properly
When it comes to a good resume, relevance is key. This means that a good resume format should show your latest role first, reflecting your most recent skills and experience, should go on top. And the rest should follow in order of most recent to the oldest.
Short & Concise
A good resume is a summary of relevant experiences. Even if you’ve worked for a long time with a lot of roles under your belt, you should keep your resume within one to two pages maximum. Don’t detail everything you’ve done in your career, rather, only include the experience and skills under each role in a way that fits the role you’re applying for. By tailoring your experiences and skills this way, you’re more likely to fit the mold that recruiters have in mind.
Data Driven
As recruitment in the Philippines becomes increasingly modern, hiring managers are now looking for objective achievements to gauge your ability. When listing the work you’ve done, highlight concrete achievements such as awards, targets met, results delivered, performance evaluation scores, etc.
It’s even better if you can list detailed numbers to quantify your contributions to past employers as this sets you apart as a go-getter with tested skills. And with a proven track-record, employers are more likely to trust your ability and be interested in hiring you.
Accuracy
In today’s digital age, it’s so easy to find out most things about a person’s life. It’s common practice for hiring managers to conduct background checks on applicants, including checking your social media accounts and reaching out to past employers to verify your claims.
So, do not lie on your resume at all. It’s better to keep your resume short if you lack experience than to exaggerate and make things up because it’s easy for recruiters to know, and they will.
So when they do, your chances of getting a job with that employer is zero.
No one likes a liar; and with a candidate they can’t trust, why would they ever trust you as an employee? Never gonna happen.
Relevant skills
As emphasized earlier, a good resume is all about relevance. This means that when listing your skills, it’s all about the ones you have that match those that a role requires or prefers. While you may feel lacking if you do not have a lot to list down, do not put special skills such as being good at sports, volunteering at the animal shelter, or knowing how to cook if the role has nothing to do with these.
When a recruiter sees these, they think you’re just fluffing up your resume, and that comes off as insecurity – you don’t think you’re qualified so you’re putting whatever you can to make yourself look good. But this has a negative effect, and you will just look bad. At the end of the day, length of one’s resume isn’t the most important, it’s relevance.
No Unnecessary Details
Like irrelevant skills, many applicants tend to add details such as religion, nationality, race, etc. on their resumes. In the age of non discrimination in hiring, these details are irrelevant, and will make your resume look unprofessional.
If you’re trying to gain empathy points, knowing that the recruiter or employer have the same background as you,
Don’t make it into a bio-data – leave out height, weight, age, and other personal details
Most employers used bio-data when screening employees decades ago. But today, no one cares about these anymore. A resume should not have your height, weight, age, and other personal details. The employer won’t care about these, and even if they do, they shouldn’t.
Landing a job interview is difficult enough. But knowing how to write a good resume is another challenge in itself. At Bossjob, we make the job application process easier for you through our AI-powered resume builder. Focus on finding a good employer, chat with bosses directly, and we’ll handle the rest to give you the best foot forward and help you land that dream job!
Visit Bossjob to learn more!
