With the availability of scholarships and easy access to loans from banks, more and more students are going for the best possible option of education rather than settling with whatever is available in their home countries.
With the easier access to resources and more possibilities, only obstacle people face is the lack of knowledge about the process of migration. And that is where you, the immigration specialist or immigration consultant, come in the picture.
In this article, we will help you write the immigration specialist resume so you can help people realize their dreams.
What does an Immigration Specialist do?
Immigration specialists assist the customers with the visa processing, relevant legal documents, immigration applications and provide all the immigration services.
Immigration consultants work in various agencies. Many immigration specialist may also be expert of higher education abroad or work permit and permanent residency in various countries.
Immigration specialists are usually occupied with helping the client understand the immigration requirements, then helping them gather the necessary documents, prepare for visa application and then they walk them through the visa processes.
During this journey they come across many aspects of immigration such as various immigration topics, immigration processes, immigration status, immigration law and many more.
As an immigration specialist you must have the knowledge of immigration law and everything related to immigration to help the clients who may be a medical student or law student and various professionals such as fashion assistant or dental receptionist or administrative assistant and a number of other professionals who may be looking for job opportunities with work permit in various countries.
To ensure quality assistance of customers, you must have in-depth knowledge of immigration laws.
How to write an immigration specialist resume?
Research
To write any resume for any profession, one needs to do some research on the role and industry. For the immigration specialist resume, it becomes even more important because the trends, the relevant aspects of immigration are always changing and you need to be updated with it all.
When applying for a new job, you should be aware of your role and its responsibilities and that is expected however being aware of the industry earns you extra point.
This research will not only help you in writing your immigration specialist resume but also help you out when you sit down for the job interview and have to answer various questions related to the immigration across the globe.
While researching you should explore your role and other relevant or similar roles. The responsibilities may be a bit different but the areas of expertise and industry will be the same. Explore a number of job postings and their job descriptions.
It will help you understand the current scenario in the industry and the expectations of the hiring managers from you and your fellow job applicants.
Format
After the research, you might be wondering how to write your resume or where to begin. The answer to those question is choosing a resume format. The resume format will help you get an outline and order for the sections to include in your immigration specialist resume. It will also help you with presentation of details of your profile as an immigration specialist or an immigration consultant. You can choose from format options that are professional and preferred by the hiring managers. Functional, reverse chronological and combination formats are such professional formats that you may want to consider for your immigration consultant resume. Functional format is suitable for the freshers who need to focus on their skills because they are yet to acquire extensive experience. The reverse chronological format is defined by the way the experience section is written. In this format, the experiences are described in reverse chronological order. This format focuses on experience while also describing relevant skills. The combination format focuses both on experience and skills. The transferable skills are also described in this format which is why it is suitable for those looking for career change. Your profile may be best fitted with the reverse chronological format.
What should immigration specialist resume look like?
Immigration specialist resume with reverse chronological format has these sections:
Header
The header of the resume will be filled with the Contact information section. In this section you should write your name, your mobile number, your professional email address, the link of your LinkedIn profile and your home address. From these details, make sure your number and email address are written in formal and accurate manner. Ensure that the email address is professional. Mention the LinkedIn profile only if you have curated it carefully and you are active on LinkedIn. The home address is not mandatory so it’s up to you if you want to note it or not. After the contact information section, there will be resume summary section followed by the experience section. We will talk about these at length a little bit later.
Education section
Education section will be right after the experience section. In this section you need to include your education and degrees. You can also include any courses and special educative programs you have completed. While noting these details, type the name of the degree, followed by the name of institution. Avoid including the year for each degree or courses because it can lead to bias in hiring managers and they might see your experience only in number of years instead of the exposure and diversity.
Skills section
The skills section can be utilized to note your soft skills and hard skills. you can also add additional skills if you wish.
Skills section is important because it gives points on your competency- what all you can do in short. You need to carefully go through immigration specialist job descriptions and note the relevant keywords.
Include these keywords in the skills section and throughout your resume. Many skills are mandatory to even beat the ATS.
📌We have curated a list for you that you can take advantage of:
- Communication skills
- Analyze resumes
- Problem solving skills
- Immigration laws
- Immigration services
- Immigration applications
- Legal documents
- Obtaining visas
- Government agencies
- Immigration documents
- Visa processing
- Immigration appeals
- Immigration forms
- Immigration processes
- Family based immigration cases
- Business visas
- Visa application process
- Immigration related issues
above listed skills also include topics and aspects of which's knowledge is mandatory. You can include them throughout your resume. We will also provide a list of relevant keywords later in this article that you can utilize.
Extra sections
Your immigration specialist resume can also have extra sections such as personal interests, language proficiency. These sections can include the information that maybe relevant to the role of immigration specialist.
These details can help you stand out and earn extra points with the recruiters as well.
Resume summary for immigration consultant resume
Now let's talk about resume summary. It is a summary of your profile as immigration specialist which means it will include the highlights of your experience along with your relevant key skills.
Describe your resume summary in bullet points. It shouldn't be more than 5 bullet points. Include your total years of experience with a little background.
Include your key accomplishments, relevant skills and any exceptional details of your profile as an immigration specialist such as awards or recognitions.
Make sure you use numbers wherever you can. For example, you can note the number of customers you have assisted for getting visa approval. You can note the rate of implemented system improvement.
Use as many action words as possible and avoid pronouns. Maintain third person and past tense in language throughout your language to reflect professionalism and meet the standards of professional resume.
How to present the professional experience?
Now your experience section should also be written in bullet points. Include the details such as job title and employer name along with the employment period.
While describing your experience, include the usual and even obvious responsibilities. Include the details from the job description of various job posting for immigration specialist.
Do not forget to mention your exceptional performance and skills that helped you perform well. Cover all the relevant details of your work because it will in turn cover all the keywords.
Getting through the ATS
We keep talking about keywords, right? What is it for? To beat the ATS or the applicant tracking systems. The recruiters utilize the software to scan the resume and get rid of unsuitable candidates.
The scanning is done with the parameter of the relevant keywords' presence in your resume. All you need to do to get through the ATS is include the relevant keywords throughout your immigration specialist resume.
📌We have made a list of relevant keywords for your role of immigration specialist:
- immigration law
- foreign national employees
- immigration process
- immigration program
- immigration consultant
- united states citizenship
- global mobility database
- employee relocation timing
- immigration related matters
- coordinate employee relocation timing
- nationality laws
- federal regulations
- assisting clients
- exceptional customer service
- nonimmigrant visas
- Canadian work permit applications
- funding efforts
- monitor visa activity
- develop functional reports
- immigration issues
- client documents
- permanent residency cases
- immigration policies
- green card process
- immigration cases
- project management
in addition to these you can also include more keywords that you may have noted down during the background research. These keywords can be used throughout your resume in various sections- resume summary, experience, education, skills and even extra sections.
What to avoid?
Now you know how to write your immigration consultant resume and what to write in it. But before you start writing your resume, let's cover some common mistakes that you need to avoid.
Many professionals write their resume with a lot of fluff content. Often there are no essential details or meaningful information. There is a lot of formal language with long sentences but no real information about the candidate's profile.
You should avoid that at all costs, recruiters can see past this façade. Instead just stick to important information that is relevant, truthful and helps you earn points.
Avoid ambiguous details and try to use numbers and facts wherever possible. For example, instead of saying helped a lot of customers during my job, write- Helped 1000+ customers in 3+ years of experience as immigration specialist.
When you save your resume, do not label it randomly i.e. Resume document or CV1. Instead label it professionally and simply i.e. Emily Prentiss Resume or Prentiss Emily CV.
Your resume will be scanned by various ATSs and recruiters. Not all ATSs have compatibility for all document formats. Recruiters may view your resume through different mediums and they may not be compatible with all kinds of document format.
What this means, is you need to save your resume in the most compatible document format. Word document or PDF are recommended document formats.
Avoid saving your resume document in any other format.
Many job seekers forget to proofread their resumes and end up losing their chance of making first good impression because of resume with spelling and grammatical errors which are highly unprofessional.
To avoid doing that, do not forget to proofread your professional resume twice after writing it.
Key Takeaways
- Research your role thoroughly
- Include keywords
- Avoid common mistakes (discussed in this article)
- Choose the right format
Having thoroughly read this guide, now you know everything there is to know about writing a job winning immigration consultant resume. You should also check out our wide range of resume examples and resume templates as it will reduce your work in half!
Good luck with the job search!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do I need to include my experience as a customer care representative before I became immigration consultant?
If you have significant relevant experience, you can skip any irrelevant experiences as they will not add any value to your immigration consultant resume.
Should I include the online immigration law course I have completed?
Yes, you should include any information that may be relevant o your role. It will help you stand out.
Should I mention that I have briefly worked as immigration paralegal?
Yes, that experience is relevant and you must have learned a lot from that opportunity even if it was brief. You can emphasize on what all you learned to overshadow the brief time period of experience.
