Does Your Resume Answer These Questions?

By Varsha Pappachan

Are you a person looking for a job or a job switch? Are you applying for interviews or planning to apply? Are you eager to have your profile shortlisted for an interview? If your answer to all these questions is yes, then you would surely know and understand the importance of an impressive resume or curriculum vitae.

 

Now the question is how one ensures the effectiveness of the resume to increase the chances of being shortlisted. Well, the answer is simple - By adding or including relevant points in the resume that may be significant to the job. This would help the hiring authority or the prospective employer to take notice of the candidate's credentials.

Does Your Resume Answer These Questions?

To make matters simpler, let us explore a few common questions asked during interviews, and how proactively including the answers to these questions in the resume would help the employer gain insight into the candidates' profiles without meeting them.

Strengths And Weaknesses

The idea behind asking this question is to know the candidate's thinking pattern, what they consider as their strength and weakness and how that may affect them on the job. While it may be easy to talk about one's strengths, revealing a weakness might be an extremely difficult thing to do for some candidates.

Therefore, it is a good idea to add some pointers in the resume mentioning the strengths as well as weaknesses. For instance, some of the strengths could be analytical ability, independent approach, creativity, patience, dedication, accountability, etc. Weaknesses could include being over critical towards your own performance, too demanding of others' performance, detail-oriented, etc.

It may be advisable to mention the strengths and weaknesses that may be relevant to the job, and to be prepared in advance with examples to be quoted during the personal interview from experience.

Why Should We Hire You?

Employers ask the candidates this question so they can list out reasons they are suitable for the job in comparison to many other prospective candidates. It is as if the candidate has to sell themselves to the company to hire them. An excellent approach to address this query through the resume will be to include the various accomplishments, relevant experience, skills and certifications, if any. It would help the candidate stand out.

Where Do You See Yourself 5 Years Down The Line?

This question helps the employer understand the candidate's future plans to stick to the company after they are hired. Stability is a major criterion employers look at before hiring candidates, considering the amount of resources, training, knowledge-sharing, etc. invested in a selected candidate after they join the company. The resume could include a brief objective or statement about the candidate's ambition, aspirations or career goal as per the career path chosen by them.

Reason To Quit The Job

Many a times the answer to this question is quite easy. One could say, 'For better job prospects, more challenges, growth, learning, etc.' However, at times, the interviewer may grill you further to know more about the exact reasons you quit your previous job.

This question helps the employer to assess if the reasons the candidate is looking for a job switch are genuine, whether it was a voluntary decision or the company asked them to quit for non-performance or something else, whether the candidate is/was on good terms with their current/last employer, etc. A one or two-liner added to the resume quoting reasons for quitting each job will be good.

What Is Your Greatest Professional Achievement?

This helps the employer judge the value-add that the candidate could bring to the company in the future. Therefore, it is most recommended to clearly mention the various professional achievements or awards in the resume.

What Are You Looking For In A New Position?

Through this question, the interviewer would like to understand the expectations of the candidate from the company or the job in terms of the growth, learning, prospects, etc. It helps them understand the attitude of the candidate. A realistic statement about the expectations from a new job or the employer may be added to the resume.

Apart from these usual questions, there may be certain situation-based questions that a resume could answer. For instance, why was there a gap in your employment? Can you clarify why you changed career paths? What do you like doing outside of your work? Are you ready to work during night shifts?

An ideal resume should categorically mention the answers to questions that may be possibly raised during the interview, depending on the candidate's background, experience, knowledge or the job that they have applied for.

It is most desirable to understand the job description, the organisational policy or interview process, expectation of the prospective employer from the employee and customise one's resume and prepare in advance for the interview. It would certainly raise chances of the resume getting screened properly and of the candidate getting selected for further rounds of the interview process.

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