Having gone through some jobseekers’ resume, Nigcareer considers it necessary to provide this guide in order to help jobseekers familiarize themselves with resume “Dos” and “Don’ts”.

Dos
1. Make your resume short. Your resume should not be too lengthy. One or two pages is considered ideal.
2. Focus on the employer’s need.
3. Emphasize your accomplishments and special skills that helped you in achieving the results.
4. Make use of bullet point to mention your achievements/ accomplishment. This will make it more reader- friendly.
5. Quantify your accomplishment where possible. For examples, “Increased sales by 50%, reduced overheads by 20%, supervised 10 staff etc)
6. Pay attention to information that are relevant to your career goals or desired job. Emphasize on your transferable skills.
7. Remember to include your contact information such as email address, day time telephone number(s), contact address (not P. O. Box)
8. State your career objective. It tells employer about your focus and what you are good at.
9. List your jobs/experience in reverse chronological order.
10. Make use of action words e.g. “established, demonstrated”
11. Use quality paper. The quality of the paper you use in preparing your resume speaks volume about your personality
12. Proofread your resume to avoid grammatical mistakes/typographical errors. You can make use of the “Spelling and Grammar” in the Microsoft Word to check errors. If you use this, you need to understand that some words may be underlined as incorrect if your language is set at “American English”. For instance, “labour” is written as “labor” in American English. Please note that the acceptable English Language in Nigeria is that of United Kingdom.

Don’ts
1. Don’t use your work email address on your resume as your employer may have access to your incoming and outgoing mail files
2. Don’t include your age on your resume.
3. Don’t include reasons for leaving your jobs or salary information
4. Don’t use personal pronouns such as “I”, “My” and “Me”
5. Don’t include information that are not relevant to your future career goals.
6. Don’t lie about your accomplishments.
7. Don’t write more than two pages. The use of bullet points will help you in providing a brief summary of your accomplishment.
8. Don’t lay emphasis on your responsibilities. Employers are more interested in your accomplishments
9. Don’t provide unprofessional email address on your resume e.g. lovesex@yourhost.com. Remember you are applying for jobs through your resume. Some applicants have good qualifications, yet no employer has ever responded to their applications. This might be one of the reasons. Make everything about your resume professional. If necessary, maintain a special mail address for the purpose of job search. Using unprofessional e mail address is not creativity!
10. Don’t use dirty or stained paper to prepare your resume