Top ten tips to rock your resume

It's obvious how important it is to have a good resume — it's the way you introduce yourself to a company, highlight your skills and talents and separate yourself from all the other candidates.

What constitutes a good resume depends on the industry, the job being applied for, the company and even the person in charge of hiring. When creating a resume, these are all things that must be considered.

Sure, there are some obvious tips, like don't use crazy colours in your resume unless you're applying for a job that reguires a lot of creativity, but there are always ways you can improve your current resume to gear up for the job hunt.

There are some tips collected from users of the resume community of the Reddit website, published by recruiters, employers and human resources reps from around the world. Here are a few ways to make your resume professional and polished.

Tip 1 If you're a new grad without much real-world experience, don't be afraid to put stellar projects or classes you excelled at on your resume. It shows what you've learned and worked on, rather than looking like you have no experience whatsoever.

Tip 2 List what you did — not what your team or department did, but what you specifically did — at your previous job. This doesn't mean just list your duties; include your accomplishments, any improvements you made to the company and anything that shows you went above and beyond the job description.

Tip 3 It seems obvious, but a lot of people don't take care to ensure their resume is absolutely perfect, and a big part of resume perfection is consistency. Make sure your dates are always formatted the same way (e.g.: either "May 2003 — Present" or "May 2003 — Current" but be sure to pick one and stick with it). The same goes for the names of places (e.g.: "London, ON" or "London, Ontario"). Be sure to always keep the font, size and style of headings the same every time. Any mistakes will look very sloppy and immediately decrease your chances of scoring a job.

Tip 4 Consider submitting your resume in PDF format, but only if the job posting does not specify that it must be submitted in a Word document. By submitting it as a PDF, you'll avoid all those red and green squiggly lines that show spelling mistakes (that could include your name, address, email, etc.) and grammar errors, and you can also avoid formatting problems. Use this tip with caution, as not all offices will have the ability to open PDF files.

Tip 5 Don't go crazy with formatting, graphics and colours. Remember that recruiters have to sort through dozens of resumes — keep yours easy to read and navigate.

Tip 6 If you choose to include a skills section, be sure to include very detailed information about what your skills are. It's easy for anyone to say they are "hard-working" and "detail-oriented," but not everyone has awesome Python skills or can type 120 words per minute. Your skills section should show what separates you from the pack.

Tip 7 Unless you're applying to be a professor at a clown academy, keep your tone professional — jokes have their spot in the workplace, and it's certainly not on your resume.

Tip 8 Consider adding keywords in white, size one font to the footer of your resume. Resume-scanning software will see the keywords, but human recruiters won't. This can help your resume rise to the top of the pile. If a job listing requires experience with a certain type of software, a resume that has it listed more times will be considered more viable than a resume that only lists it once.

Tip 9 Fit your resume to the page. New grads generally can only fill one page, but you have a ton of experience and must spill over to the second page, either fill that entire second page, or start chopping, because it looks highly unprofessional to leave half a page blank.

Tip 10 Everybody embellishes — it's common nature. A little embellishment is all right, and even expected, but never, ever flat-out lie. You will be caught, and you will definitely burn your bridges with whoever caught you, and possibly whomever they know.

For more resume tips, or to have your resume critiqued by the experts, visit reddit.com/r/resumes