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How to Write an Effective Resume That Gets Results!
What is A Great Resume?
A resume is simply a description of the skills, experience, education, and achievements that qualify you for employment. A good resume informs. A Great Resume not only informs, it also persuades the employer that you have the skills, attitude, track record or other attributes that are special enough to warrant a personal interview. Read on to discover how to prepare a Great Resume!
Choose a Format or Style of Resume to Suit Your Situation
The Chronological Resume
- The Chronological resume outlines your work history in reverse order.
- This type of resume is preferred by the majority of employers and recruiters because it provides information about:
- The number and types of employers
- How long you worked for companies
- What you did at those firms
- How well you performed your duties.
- This format makes it easy to understand and evaluate a candidates’ career history.
- The Sample Resume provided here is in this format.
The Functional or Achievement Resume
- The Functional or Achievement resume lists achievements and then lists employers, dates, and titles. The functional format is most applicable to individuals seeking opportunity in a field in which they have no prior experience, have numerous short-term employers, or have a work history that involves employment in several industries. This type of resume is more difficult for employers to use and is far less effective than a chronological resume. We do not recommend the Functional or Achievement resume style.
General Guidelines on Writing an Effective Resume
- Effective resumes are short-rarely more than two pages and never more than three.
- Use 1" margins for top, both sides and bottom. Use Times New Roman or similar style type with no smaller font size than 10. Keep the type styles and sizes uniform and avoid overusing bold, italics, and capitalization.
- Most resumes are eventually stored in a database. Many employers and most recruiters will appreciate a resume of two pages or less that can easily be electronically stored. Keep the resume short, avoid fancy formats, macros, internal tables, pictures, etc. Use the format presented here as a guide.
- Check and double-check spelling. Use Spell Check and have a friend check for misused words, typos, and grammatical errors that Spell Check often misses.
- Remember to speak about your most recent position in current tense and use the past tense to describe earlier employment.
- Double-check your phone numbers, email and home addresses.
- Check dates for accuracy. We urge that, whenever possible, dates be presented as year to year (1991 to 1995) as opposed to month/date/year to month/date/year (11/05/91 to 11/05/95).
- Leave out references to "I". Whenever possible use "we" or simply leave "I" out. More than one "I" in a resume can make a person appear egocentric in a world where teamwork is highly prized.
- Many readers of your resume may not understand highly technical or arcane terminology. Select words carefully so that you convey the meaning you want in a manner that can be easily understood by a broad cross section of potential readers.
Items to NOT Include in Your Resume
- References-Provide a list of references only after a company has shown interest in you and you have had a face to face interview with that company.
- DO NOT provide Social Security Number in your resume. Provide this data only after a personal interview.
- Reasons why you may have left past employers. This kind of negative information has the effect of undermining the positive, upbeat nature of the resume. Provide this information as part of the interviewing process and do so carefully. (See Interview Skills for more insight)
- Copies of transcripts, letters of recommendation, awards, training certificates, or examples of your work. You may be asked to present these items later in the process, so have them ready.
- Pictures. There are lots of reasons why you should not include a picture of yourself but I can't think of any reason why you should.
- Information about your marital status, age, race, height, weight, religion, ethic heritage, sexual preference or any other personal data. Information of this type simply does not belong in a United States resume.
- Salary information. This is confidential information and should never appear in a resume. Supply this information to recruiters and potential employers-but do so as part of the interview process.
- An overly cute or suggestive email address. An email address should be relatively simple like jims31@some.com. If your email address is something like hotsexdaddy@some.com, you risk offending the sensibilities of some potential employers.
Sample Resume in Suggested Format
- Sample Resume
The format for this resume is designed to convey substantial information, be easily and quickly read, and be database friendly. We have made revisions to this sample to reflect changes in what our clients have told us they want to see in resumes.
- Note: There is no "Best" resume format. This sample represents a format proven to be effective with our clients. We encourage you to use this suggested format as a starting point and to customize your resume to suit your situation and personality. Be creative!
Other Sources of Ideas for Creating Your Resume
Resume Submission Tips:
- Don’t use Winzip or other compression program. If your resume is so long that you need to compress it, you have not been paying attention. Many employers cannot open a Zip file and others will simply not take the time.
- Don’t present a resume in Power Point unless asked to do so by the hiring manager.
- Do send your resume as a Microsoft Word document or plain text file.
- Include a short, two paragraph cover letter designed to introduce yourself, briefly outline your experience, and request that the reader take the time to read your attached resume. This cover letter can be in the body of the email or sent as a separate attachment.
- Some companies and a few recruiters do not accept resumes submitted as attachments. In these situations, save a copy of your Word document as a text file. This will remove most formatting, so experiment with it to make as presentable a copy as possible before sending to employers or recruiters. Copy and paste this text file to the body of the email.
- No matter how you present your resume to a potential employer, take the time to make it attractive, easy to read, and exciting. Your future just might depend on the quality of this very important document.
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