resume
Resume is the document that lists your work history, skills and achievements, the first handshake between you and a job you have not met yet.
In plain English
Ngozi had been selling fabric at Balogun market for six years when her cousin in Leeds told her about an office job vacancy back in Lagos, something to do with inventory and supply chains. Ngozi knew stock better than most graduates, she could tell you what sold in December and what sat dusty till Easter, but she had never written any of it down on paper. Her cousin sat her down on a video call one Sunday and said, before anything else, you need a resume.
A resume is simply the story of your working life, written so a stranger can read it in under two minutes and decide you are worth an interview. It lists where you have worked, what you did there, what you achieved, and what skills you carry around like tools in a bag. In the United Kingdom people often call it a CV, short for curriculum vitae, and in Nigeria and the United States the word resume is more common, but they mean roughly the same thing for most job seekers.
The trick with a resume is specifics. More than managed a shop, but grew monthly sales from ₦180,000 to ₦310,000 by tracking which fabrics moved fastest and reordering before stock ran out. That single line told Ngozi's future employer more than three vague paragraphs ever could, because numbers make claims believable.
A resume is also a living document, not something you write once and forget. Every promotion, every new skill, every project you are calmly good at deserves a place on it, updated the way you would update a ledger, because you never know which Sunday phone call will ask you to send one across.
Ngozi got the interview. And not since the market work suddenly became glamorous on paper, but because she finally showed, in writing, everything she had already proven with her hands.
Tunde worked as a customer service assistant earning ₦95,000 a month. On his resume he wrote that he resolved an average of 40 customer complaints daily and helped cut response time from two days to four hours, which made a recruiter in Abuja call him back within a week.
Questions people ask
How long should a resume be?
For most people starting out or with under ten years of experience, one page is enough. Two pages is fine if you have a longer history, but anything beyond that usually gets skimmed rather than read properly.
Should I include every job I have ever done?
No, focus on roles relevant to the job you want, or ones that show transferable skills. A market trading background can be very relevant to a sales or operations role even if it looks unrelated at first glance.
Do I need a different resume for every job application?
Ideally yes, small adjustments matter. Highlighting the achievements and skills that match what a specific employer is asking for makes your resume feel written for them, not copied and pasted everywhere.
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