Get your career profile in order before you apply for that job

Whether you’re actively job hunting or you’ve found your dream career, keeping your professional profile updated is something everyone should always practice.

Why? What if someone needs your updated profile to nominate or recommend you for an award? Or even just positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. Or in case of the worst, you need a new job.

This is the first of a three-part series to help you get your professional profile in order. We’ll start with the basics.

Basic requirements

1. Your name, obviously
2. Career objective or profile that summarises your skills
3. Career experience, if you have any. New graduates can include relevant industrial training, internships and voluntary work
4. Education, where you studied. If you’ve already held a job, you can skip your high school grades
5. Current and/or expected salary, if applicable. Research industry salary levels rather than a random figure you think you deserve
6. Profile picture, mostly professional—depending on your industry—and not including selfies

Things you should take out of/NOT include on your resume

1. Marital status
2. How many kids you have
3. How many siblings you have
4. Crazy fonts and/or distracting artwork
5. Irrelevant work experiences
6. “References upon request”
7. Expected salary
8. Height/weight
9. Reasons why you quit your last job
10. Lies

What HR personnel want to know about you from your resume and cover letter

1. How well you’ll fit into the existing team
2. What you know about the company
3. If you’ve successfully handled similar responsibility in the past
4. The level of confidence that you have in your ability to do the job
5. If there’s a match between your expectations of the role and what the role entails

These five points must be communicated in your resume and cover letter. In the next part of this series, we’ll detail how to do that.

We’ll also be exploring methods to optimise your profiles on some of the major job portals.

Most common job portals in Malaysia

1. LinkedIn
2. Jobstreet
3. Job Store
4. Glassdoor
5. WOBB
6. Maukerja

In no particular order.

The good news is that not all these portals require you to have a full profile on them and the essential requirements for your resume are the same.

Note that we used ‘resume’, NOT a curriculum vitae (CV). They are not the same even though many people use both phrases interchangeably. For regular people and regular jobs, all you need is a resume. A CV is a more expanded version of your professional achievements.