The Resume is focused on the individual's expertise and ability to make a bottom-line contribution to the organization. It requires extensive preparation with many long, hard hours of work. The end result will be an extraordinary set of marketing credentials. Typically, these credentials will run two to four pages in length.

When a position becomes available in a company, the HR function and hiring manager review and reach agreement upon the criteria for selecting the right person. Job specifications define requirements such as education, work experiences, industry background, skill sets and technical proficiencies, which may result in eight to ten criteria for the hiring decision.

The job specifications are readily available to job seekers in ads, postings on company web sites and other sources. The order of presentation of the specifications also demonstrates what is most to least important and may suggest possible tradeoffs and areas of flexibility as well.

A resume screener searches for candidates who match the specifications. A strong, focused resume that captures three or four core competencies plus related accomplishments allows the screener to make multiple connections with the job specifications.

Here are the steps to build your powerful resume -

• The Objective: You should describe goals set for your career enhancement in about 2-3 lines, which will motivate the person evaluating to pursue your candidature for the job/position.
• Professional Summaries: A summary of key accomplishments you have achieved throughout your career, which should include quantitative/qualitative achievements. You should develop at least ten points summary for use in different situations, but you will typically include three to five points relevant to the job/position applied.
• Academic: Please mention educational credential from Graduation/Bachelor onwards with the year of passing and institution, but please don't include percentage/marks, schooling details.  You can also mention about the Management Development Programs conducted by reputed institutions, but not the in house/departmental training sessions.
• Project List: This option is perfect for engineers, programmers, consultants or anyone whose career centers on projects. List all the major projects in which you played a key role, responsibilities, technologies, etc. 
• Experience: Prospective employers want to know what RELEVANT EXPERIENCE you've had in the recent past. Highlight the most recent jobs and consolidate the past into several lines. Be specific about the organization, position and key responsibilities handled.
• Leaving dates off your resume will surely cause eyebrows to raise and make people wonder what you've been up to lately. Please mention your date of birth, tenures with previous employers, etc.
• If you have experience in more than one field and it needs to be included on the resume, consider grouping the types of jobs together under specific headings such as "Instructional/Training" or "Customer Service/Sales"
• Synopsis of Research: A summary of research credentials, software programs you designed including application and benefit, synopsis of a book or article you published, etc.
• GRUDGES FACTOR - Please don't include the reasons for the job you've left or leaving. Some situations are better explained in person, if at all.
• PERSONAL INFORMATION -- No one cares if you are single, married, plays the trombone, or enjoy cricket. Please don't include your race, gender, credentials of family members/relatives.
• Double and triple check for spelling or grammatical errors.

Using action words to maximize the impact, describe how your background and strengths would make you a strong candidate for the position you are applying.

Once you have carefully checked over your professionally written resume to ensure that the salient points mentioned above have been addressed, don't forget one of the most important adjuncts to a good resume - THE COVER LETTER.