Resume Tips
Resume Tips
Resumes are about you and your performance in previous jobs, indicating how you might perform in your next job.
Format suggestions
- Keep the setup balanced and consistent.
- When listing employers, give a brief company description.
- When listing projects, include details such as project descriptions, dollar amounts, specific duties, and outcome.
- List specific accomplishments and responsibilities.
Sell yourself. Be sure to highlight all of your strengths.
Make a good first impression. Place the most interesting and compelling facts about yourself at the beginning. List your qualifications in order of relevance.
Be concise and summarize information. As a rule of thumb, resumes reflecting five years experience or less should fit on one page. More extensive experience can justify using a second page. Consider three pages (about 15 years of experience) the upper limit.
List only recent information. Show work experience only for the last 10 to 15 years.
When describing jobs, fill your resume with Problem-Action-Results statements. In other words, first state the problem that existed in your workplace, then describe what you did about it, and finally point out the beneficial results.
Begin sentences with action verbs. Portray yourself as someone who is active, intelligent, and gets things done.
Emphasize your skills. Use a skill-based format that stresses your main talents. Use popular keywords and buzzwords that are industry-specific.
Communicate. Use words understood by everyone to describe your experience.
Quantify your experience. Use numbers such as budgets, cost savings, and time efficiencies, which can be attributed directly to the effects of your work.
Omit needless items, such as social security number, marital status, health, citizenship, age, scholarships, and irrelevant associations, memberships, and publications; recreational activities, a second mailing address, references, mention of references ("available upon request"), travel history, previous pay rates, supervisors' names, reasons for leaving jobs, and components of your name which you do not routinely use, such as your middle name.
Proofread, proofread, proofread. Be neat and error-free. Be sure to catch all spelling errors, grammatical weaknesses, unusual punctuation, and inconsistent capitalization.
Keep it honest. You want to say as much as you can that's positive about yourself, but remember, if the resume works it will get you an interview with someone who will probably be looking right at it while you are in front of him. Don't ever put in anything you can't defend, justify, or comfortably explain.
Make sure it's right! You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. If you can't do it yourself, then seek assistance from a professional who can give you the extra edge.
Be organized, logical, and concise. The format of your resume reflects strongly upon your personality.
Be positive. Emphasize a positive, can-do attitude.