Imagine looking for a new book online. You go to the bestseller section, a title catches your attention, and you click on the summary. But after reading the first few lines, you stop because nothing holds your interest. What you might not have realized is that the last sentence had a major plot twist that could have compelled you to buy the book.

The best resume is limited to one or two pages, no matter how many years of experience you have. It should highlight your achievements without being very descriptive about them. When applying for a tech job, it pays to use strong, confident writing to get your technical skills across in the most effective way.

Make sure that you don’t clutter your resume with a lot of technical skills. While you may be efficient with languages like C, C++, Java, Python and also with AI/ML, it’s always best to tailor the skills section to the job description. The addition of keywords in your “skills” section also increases the chances of making it to the shortlist if the organization uses bots for the first level of resume screening.

Candidates should provide specific details on how they have used technical tools under the description of their current and past positions. You might also want to consider detailing your proficiency levels for your skills on the scale of beginner, intermediate and expert. While adding details in the skills section, you could use a paragraph or a list format highlighting Languages, Tools, Operating System, Years of Experience.

Recruiters love numbers. Use numbers to highlight your achievements at work in the work experience section using bullet points. Real data and numbers immediately build credibility with the hiring manager. If it’s a process improvement project that you did, then mention the productive hours that were saved. Similarly, if it was a cost-efficiency project, then mention the amount you saved. Using percentages to highlight these accomplishments looks professional and is an effective way to make an impression through your technical resume.

While a recruiter will mostly look for your technical skills, a hiring manager on the other hand will also scan your soft skills such as teamwork, collaboration, transparency, values, etc. This would be important for the hiring manager to understand if you would fit in within the team and organization.

You can consider making a skills bank on your resume which highlights both your technical skills and non-technical ones. The other approach is to mention statements where specific outputs with respect to your non-technical side come out, for example, "Collaborated with the onsite team to deliver an X project within 6 months which saved x hours of resource utilization."

Remember that a resume is always the first impression for a hiring manager or a recruiter. So, it’s worth putting in the extra effort to make your skills shine through in your CV. Afterall, it could help you land your dream job. Lastly, keeping your resume updated is always a good idea—it will come in handy when suitable jobs come up on the career pages of reputed organizations. You never know when opportunity comes knocking at your door.