I’ve been on both sides of the interview table, sorted through and read hundreds of poorly worded and contrived resumes until my eyes bled. For my sake and for those who have to read you resume, here is some advice on writing an effective resume.
- Get the interview. Don’t forget the sole purpose a resume is to get the interview, a resume will not land the job for you. Do not try to get the job by overwhelming the reader with irrelevant information and boring details.
- Remember your audience; strive to write the resume from the viewpoint of the hiring manager. Do your best to provide him with the information he wants, then organize your resume by placing the most relevant information on top. Think, what would you look for if you were in his position. Does he really care that you enjoy sports? If you don’t know, ask a friend.
- Be specific not artificial. Try to avoid buzz words, they make you seem dishonest, instead be specific about your achievements, tell me why what you did was important and do it using active, not passive verbs. Also, please never mention the word synergy or “personal growth.”
- Write an objective. I consider objectives to be an important part of your resume, it help me understand the type of job you are looking for. I also like it when you’ve customized your objective for the specific job opening. Write the objective yourself, do not copy and paste from sites like monster.com. If your objective sounds anything like the following I will burn your resume: “To acquire a position that will allow me to utilize my education, creative skills and talents, while realizing my full potential on a professional level and maximizing my personal growth.“
- Make it pretty. Just because your resume was sent to me in an email, it doesn’t mean you can’t make your resume standout from the rest. Make your resume easy to read by avoiding decorative or fancy fonts, using white spaces and headings to separate different sections of your resume and keeping things neatly aligned in tables (+1 point for invisible borders).
- If you aren’t sure, follow the one-page rule. This is especially important when you are submitting your resume directly to the company. There is nothing inherently wrong with a two or three page resume, IF the job experience warrants it. When you’ve only worked as a cashier or a lifeguard during college then you should not have a two-page resume. When in doubt follow the one-page rule. Avoid creating resumes that are 1.5 pages long. If your resume is slightly over a page then fiddle with the font size, margins and gutters and get the resume to fit on a page.
- Keep your resume current. There’s nothing worse than writing your resume after you’ve been laid off. Update your resume after major projects or promotions; ignore the one page rule for the time being. When it’s time to find another job you’ll be ready. Sometimes the hardest part is getting started, use the following to help you get started: “Resume.doc, Resume.pdf.” Find a format you like and get started!
Related posts:
Great tips! I especially liked the part “….I will burn your resume…” – that gave me a laugh.
I would mention to void using PDF as your format. It’s large and most resume searching utilities will skip over PDF files. Also, some keywords are good:
Your resume _will_ likely be submitted to some pre-screening computer system that will pull out relevant keywords. Don’t go crazy with them, but if you know what you’re talking about… put down the buzzwords. You WILL get asked in your interview so don’t fib
Ben Scheirman - 15 Sep 06 at 7:03 pm
I think things such as “don’t like” and “check your grammer” should be obvious. I don’t have any experience with pre-screening computer systems. I agree you shouldn’t use too many buzzwords. When I read a resume with a lot of buzzwords, or read objectives like the one I mentioned above, I think this guy didn’t put any thought into his resume, he has no idea what he’s doing.
Shey's Rebellion - 19 Sep 06 at 3:54 am
[...] You read the job ads and submitted your resume even though your skills only matched two or three of the dozens of TLAs thrown at you. Now you’ve been called for the interview and you’re nervous. Don’t be! [...]
Shey’s Rebellion » First the Resume, now the Interview - 5 Jan 07 at 7:19 pm