mdolla: How Anyone Can Be a Star Candidate and Impress the Employer in 9 Seconds

Have you ever had one of those days where you sat down and wondered why you hadn’t received a call back from that place? Did you ever think about how you didn’t get as many interview calls as your friends and peers? The problem might not be that you are not the right candidate: it could be the ultimate job fetcher, your resume.

New research has shown that you have only less than 9 seconds to grab the a potential employer’s attention.^[1] A resume is the employer’s window to a candidate’s profile. Your resume represents you. Sure, it might be just a document with all your key skills and qualifications, but it’s also your identity in that office before they have seen you. Your resume matters as much as your performance in the interview

A talented candidate can get rejected easily with a bad resume.

Let’s just roll with a hypothetical scenario: you are an Engineer from a reputed college who has just completed his graduation. You are looking out for an opportunity. You have a basic resume with some information provided in it and that’s your identity in the companies that you apply in.

Remember that each brand wants to hire the best of the best, leaving no room for doubt.^[2] If your resume isn’t up to the mark or presentable, it wouldn’t matter how talented you are, they will just reject you. No second thoughts. Terrifying, eh?

Make your employer fall in love with your resume first.

Ask HR experts out there, they will tell you stories of companies falling in love with resumes and hiring people way out of their requirements. Recently, Microsoft has gone out of its way and appreciated a Teen girl’s effort to impress her crush through an innovative powerpoint. Those things strike a chord amongst employers. Your resume should be like that.

There are multiple approaches you can have while creating a resume: you can create a simple one or a visually heavy simple one and many more. If you are a graphic designer or a creative head or something of that sort, your employer would expect a visual appealing resume that reflects your skills.

For more technical and clerical jobs, they expect simper resumes as minimal is best. That doesn’t mean you can’t experiment with them, you can and you should, but stick to the basic hygiene and try not to go overboard because that distracts the employers from paying attention to your skills and qualifications.

Good language that’s void of spelling or grammatical errors is obviously required in every resume. If you want to take it a notch higher, we have a short cut for you.

Did you know that there are stunning and free resume templates for word? Here are 9 amazing platforms in which you can download free resume templates in word:

Hloom.com: With over 1000 resume templates for MS Office

With over 1000 resume templates in their database, you can choose the best that fits your needs. Moreover, they have a resume builder tool to create resume templates specifically curated as per your experience and skill set.

Resumecompanion.com: Helps you showcase your experience better

Resume Companion is yet another exciting place to download free resume templates in word and showcase the experience in more better way.

Microsoft Featured Word Templates: Basic templates provided by the official MS site

Templates.office.com is the official platform provided by Microsoft office services. Although these platform has very basic templates to provide, this is still quite a crisp destination to create a decent resume.

The Muse: With over 200 resume templates for any job aspirants

It stands out with its variety this particular platform provides you up to 275 templates which is quite a diverse range of resume templates for any job aspirants.

Resume Genius: With high quality resume samples handpicked by professionals

It has a dedicated section for resume sample which are downloadable in word format, but they distinguish themselves from the rest by ensuring higher quality because these samples are handpicked by experts whom they call Resume Genius professionals.

Freeresumes: With templates that are visually attractive

Although it has a limited number of templates, it has a very visual centric approach.

Resume World: With technical-specialized templates

They specializes on CV templates that are slightly technical. Although this platform is quite user-friendly, it requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to download the templates.

Template.net: With lots of resume and cover letter samples in Photoshop and Word

This website provides great resume formats in both Photoshop and Word. This will help an aspirant even further is the cover letter templates which are pretty awesome.

Resume2017.net: Focuses on chronological resume templates which are loved by HR professionals

They focus on chronological resume templates which is apparently quite a hit among job seekers and HR professionals. With only 16 formats, this platform could still help you as its templates are well-researched with a mix of different types of templates.

The idea is simple: Create a resume that catches an employer’s attention in the right manner without being distracting. We promise you that a good resume can bring you hundreds of opportunities, unlike a detailed one that doesn’t do much.