“The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.”
Abraham Maslow
YOUR RESUME IS, OF COURSE, THE FIRST THING A POTENTIAL EMPLOYER sees representing you. It must make a good impression—one strong enough to make a recruiter want to look at the rest of your information and striking enough to get attention in the very few seconds that are spent reading it. Employers rarely read past the first third of the first page (we get so many!), so it is important that they be immediately gripping. The rest of the resume must look great as well, and remember that your goal is to catch their attention enough that they do continue reading it and contact you!
I often see people in this market who are unexpectedly laid off or terminated and therefore do not have a resume prepared. This can cost them valuable time in finding their next position. With the current economic condition, it is critical to strike while the iron is hot. If you see a position posted online that is a strong match for your background and you wait 24 hours to submit your resume because you do not have a resume and/or your resume is not up to date, you can lose out on that position.
My recommendation is that you always have an up-to-date resume, and that every time you get a new position you add that position to your existing resume. This is what I call your “master resume.” Your master resume should have everything you have ever done listed on it and should be up to date at all times.
As different opportunities come up that you might be suitable for, you can adjust your master resume by adding or subtracting information to better suit the position you are applying for.
The easiest way to put your resume together is to utilize the “Resume Template” function in Microsoft Word. Resume Template offers hundreds of different templates for a variety of positions.
You never know what is going to happen in this economy, so no matter how secure you think your job is, make certain that your resume is in mint condition and ready to go at all times.
The most important thing in a resume is good formatting, followed by strong writing skills. If a resume is poorly formatted it will be dismissed no matter how well it is written. I typically delete any resumes that do not offer clean, easy-to-read formatting.
This means: “Summary of Qualifications” at the top. The Summary of Qualifications can be anywhere from two to five sentences that clearly depict why you are qualified for the position. Your “Work Experience” section should follow your Summary of Qualifications. Your Work Experience section should include strong action verbs and demonstrate how you can be of use to the company where you are applying.
It is important that you use bullets to draw the reader’s attention and that your dates are lined up on the right-hand side of the page with your employer’s name and your title on the left.
Finally, you want to have an “Education” and a “Skills” section. The Education portion should clearly list any degrees you have attained, but does not have to include the dates that you attained those degrees. The Skills section should list all of the relevant computer skills that you possess.
Avoid having a “hobby” or “interest” section; as for the most part employers do not care. If your hobbies and interests have led you to acquire relevant experience that would be valuable on the job, then include those with your experience in the appropriate section.
There is no universal typesetting format that each resume has to follow. While that leaves a lot up to you as an applicant, it does not mean that it is a good idea to do anything to distract from what is important: why your background makes you the best candidate.
One of the most common errors I see on a resume is the inefficient use of page space. This will only make it seem as if you are intentionally leaving areas blank in order to cover up a lack of material. Think of the page space on your resume as valuable real estate. Every space on your resume should be used to make a case for why an employer should hire you, and should not be wasted. Be especially careful of having too wide of margins. Having wide margins can leave that valuable space unused!
Do not turn your resume into a narrative or use paragraph form when writing it. The resume needs to be an attractively presented collection of data that can be seen and understood at a glance so that you will get a call back from even the most inattentive and hurried recruiter. A story made up of paragraphs will almost certainly contain information you do not need, take too long to read and absorb, and will make you stand out in a bad way. Use a simple, conservative and information-rich format in assembling your resume.
Employers do not take the time to read your resume; they prefer to skim it. The same is true of lengthy paragraphs. In order to avoid an employer missing something important on your resume, use bullet points to highlight significant information and to break apart your resume more clearly.
Everything on your resume should be properly aligned, especially your dates and employers. I often come across resumes where nothing is aligned or some of the resume is aligned and then the rest is all over the place. This does not work! You need to make your resume visually appealing and easy to read. Setting proper alignment can help do this. When you do not properly align your dates and/or other important information on your resume, it can cause your resume to look sloppy. Take the time to set the necessary tabs to make everything line up appropriately and come across more clearly.
When is it appropriate to use a functional vs. a reverse chronological resume?
First, let me start by explaining that a reverse chronological resume is what you see when you look at a typical resume. It starts with your most recent position and goes backwards with a description of each job. A functional resume is a list of all of your skills listed via bullet points at the top and a breakdown of your past employers listed at the bottom with simply your employer, title and dates and no description under each position.
So what type of resumes do employers prefer?
Hands down, recruiters and employers alike prefer reverse chronological resumes. The problem with functional resumes is that it is impossible to tell what type of work you did for each specific position. Interestingly, though, that is also the good thing about a functional resume format if you are looking to switch careers.
Functional resumes are good for three types of people:
1. Recent college graduates who do not have much work experience
2. People who are looking to transition out of one field into another
3. People who have a lot of movement on their resumes
Even though employers strongly dislike functional resumes, they are useful for recent college graduates. When you have recently graduated, you often do not have specific work experience; however, you do have skills that you acquired during school that you can list on your resume using the functional style.
The same is true for people who are changing careers. You might not have specific work experience in your target field, but you may have similar knowledge from your past position that you can list under your “Accomplishments” or “Summary of Qualifications” at the top of your functional resume.
As for people who have movement on their resumes (i.e., switching jobs every one to two years), functional resumes can be a good way to cover ten years of experience where you might have had seven to ten jobs. If you are someone who has a lot of movement on your resume, the best thing you can do is try to get a good position and stay there for at least four to seven years to get some stability on your resume.
In general, unless you are a recent college graduate or changing professions, I strongly recommend using a reverse chronological style resume.
Even if your resume is eye-catching, polished, complete and well written, it is important to remember that it can be undermined in an instant by an easy-to-overlook mistake. I have assembled some of the most dangerous resume traps out there—mistakes that anyone could make but which can sink an otherwise good resume instantly. They are certainly easy enough to make—I know because they are the mistakes I see time and time again from all varieties of job seekers. Read carefully so you know what to avoid!
Linda thinks that she has found her dream job. Her preliminary interviewers all seem to like her, and every reference says she does great work. But one day she suddenly finds herself out of the running. It turns out that the paralegal certificate from UCLA that she listed on her resume did not check out with UCLA, and when she was asked to produce it, it had the wrong Dean’s name on it for the year she graduated. Linda tries to make the point that the job does not even require a paralegal certification, but that only makes her now-former potential employer wonder all the more why she would see the need to forge one.
If you cannot get a job by telling the truth, it is not a job you should be going for.
It can be tempting to lie on a resume in order to make yourself look better—or even to fudge dates when you cannot quite remember if you were hired in July or August of last year. There just are not any situations where the risk is worth it. Employers do check on the accuracy of the information they get in resumes, and if anything has been even slightly misrepresented, it is a good reason for them to dismiss the possibility of hiring you entirely. Even if something slips by and you are hired after submitting an inaccurate resume, there is actually a strong chance that you will be fired immediately when the truth comes out.
Present everything in the most flattering manner possible, but not to the point of deviating from verifiable facts. If you cannot be sure when you were hired for that old job, it is better just to give the month and year or just the year than to make up a specific date and run the risk of being proven wrong.
Even if you think that there is no way whoever reads your resume could check on a particular fact or if you think people will back you up when asked to verify what you say, you run a risk that is too great if it is a job you care about. I know one job seeker with a lawyer listed on her references who was willing to lie for her about how long she’d had her previous job. This lie worked fine—until prospective employers tried calling the office where she said she had been working, and they said she had not worked there for over five years. She was immediately dropped as a candidate.
We recruiters do have a “blacklist” of people coded DNU for “do not use.” It is not especially easy to get on this list, but one of the best ways is to be caught falsifying your qualifications or employment history.
After grabbing the reader’s attention in just a few seconds, the resume has to be just deep enough to make the reader contact you for an interview, but not so complex that there is an overload of information. There may be a lot that you want recruiters to know about you, but by and large, when they see a novel-length packet dropped on their desk, they will not go through the effort of reading seven pages before they find out what you can do for them. If too much information is listed, it becomes more difficult for the reader to discern the strengths and gems on your resume.
A perfect example of this was a man who sent his resume in for a plaintiff litigation paralegal position that I had posted. I had received close to a hundred resume submissions for this particular job posting and only had time to skim the first page of his four-page resume. When I did not see any relevant experience for the position on the first page of the resume, I quickly deleted it. The next day I got a call from him, irate that he had not heard back regarding his submission. I went through my deleted resume file and pulled up his resume, wherein I found that his “relevant” experience was not listed until the third page of his resume. Needless to say, he did not get the interview for that position and he has since rewritten his resume to be only one page.
Just as each candidate’s work experience and work goals are different, each candidate’s resume is going to be different as well. There is a balance that has to be struck between not enough information and too much, but a good rule of thumb for resume writing is to keep everything to under one page. Not only can you almost always fit everything that you need into that amount of space, but also a recruiter reviewing many people’s resumes quickly is unfortunately not likely to investigate past a first page anyway. Do not let this make you feel too limited, though: the one-page guideline is actually helpful in that it should encourage you to boil your presentation down to just the most impressive and relevant elements.
Another good rule of thumb for those with longer work histories is that in general a resume should not go back longer than about ten years. What you want to get across is who you are now; information older than ten years will not usually be relevant. One exception to consider is that if you have over ten years of history with one company, you may want to break the rules and run on to the second page; you want to show what you learned with your long-time employer, but you also want to show yourself having more than one job if possible.
Sylvia is a candidate for a job posting in an area where she has extensive experience. She creates a short resume that highlights the relevance of the experience that she has, but when she submits it, employers pass on it nonetheless when they see that in order to pad it out, Sylvia has listed “retail therapy” among her hobbies.
Most of the time, hobbies have no place in a serious resume, unless they provide relevant real-world experience to the job you are looking for (if you are applying to work as an entertainment critic, your moviereviews blog certainly has a place). But a line like “retail therapy” can only hurt rather than help.
As an obvious joke, it shows the reader of the resume that the applicant is not taking the process seriously. A sense of humor is seen as a good quality, but a mistimed, bad or offensive joke can do far more damage than a good one—and even the world’s greatest comedians cannot manage to get a laugh on every line. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that the people who usually think they “have a sense of humor” are those who laugh at our jokes, rather than the ones who make us laugh the most. The pressure to be ready to laugh at the boss’s weak jokes is the stuff of cliché—but it is usually also good policy.
Before even thinking about including a less-than-relevant hobby or a frivolous comment, think first about what it reflects on you. Does it show you as someone who can put the interests of the business first? Would a company that wants a person to handle books and finances be confident in someone who practices “retail therapy?”
All that your potential employer needs to know from your resume is why they need to hire you. Any extra information about other subjects is too much. Do not list why you left your last job; even if you have the best of all possible reasons for leaving, listing a reason can only hurt your chances and cannot help them. It is occasionally advisable to include your reasons for leaving in a cover letter, but only when the employer might have serious reservations about why you have moved around so much.
Do not list your salary at previous jobs on your resume. It does not bear on your new one, and cannot help you at all—a lower salary can make you seem less skilled or make your new employer want to pay you less, and a higher one can make them expect you will demand too much or not stay too long in the position. Only list your prior salary history if instructed to do so on the application. Otherwise, leave it blank and negotiate salary later (more on that coming!).
Do no list unrelated hobbies or “filler” material; that will only make you seem less qualified than you would be if you had left it off.
Sorry if you feel like I am stifling your creativity, but, again, the resume is there only as a source of information. Anything that does not transmit information about you that is relevant to the job you are applying for has got to go, including images, colorful borders or fancy text-art fonts that take up valuable space that can be used for content. This will almost always be perceived as gaudy and tacky at best, or as an intentional screen for a lack of content.
Use a conservative font. Print in black and use italics or underlines for emphasis only sparingly. Wild typography is very distracting, and gives the reader the impression that you are trying to cover up for lightness on substance. I see this often, and every time it is the person who submits a professional, black-and-white resume that lets the words themselves do the talking who ends up looking better than one who submits a resume with less clear typography.
There are plenty of reasons you may want to list an address on your resume far from the job where you are applying. Perhaps you are in the process of moving, or maybe you are intending to move if you get the position. Unfortunately, the fact is that this can make employers less likely to hire you, thinking that it is not necessarily worth the effort of bringing you on board if your distance might make you refuse the offer anyway. If a company can hire someone just as qualified as you, but the other person lives locally, chances are they will choose the person who lives closer rather than risk dealing with relocation costs and the chance that you might decide not to relocate after all.
It is also important to be careful about posting your resume on www.monster.com or www.careerbuilder.com with your home address. You never know who might find that information. For those candidates that do want to list their address or need to list their address for particular jobs, I always recommend getting a PO Box during the time that you are looking. Getting a PO Box can be a good way to avoid any unwanted solicitations. If you live out of area, you may want to consider leaving your address off your resume, getting a PO Box in the area you are relocating to, or finding out if you can use a friend’s address in the area you are looking to move to.
There is no right answer, but if you notice you are not getting interviews in locations that are further away, you may want to consider alternative options.
Many of us set up our first email addresses years ago, and the chances are pretty good that we chose a username that was possibly a little goofy and designed to impress our friends. In this case, it is time to put away childish things and get a businesslike, frivolity-free email address. Even the best of resumes will fail to impress even the most desperate of employers if it asks them to contact you at an email address such as sexylegs69@yahoo.com. Email services such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail (to name only the most popular) are free, so there is no reason not to get a new email for professional purposes. Use some permutation of your real name: if you’re called John William Baker, then you are likely to find jbaker, jwbaker, johnwbaker, etc., taken, but—boring as it may seem—being johnbaker6532086 is infinitely better than asking potential employers to email you as “slacker420.”
It is hard to make a phone number look unprofessional, but things can be just as bad when employers try to dial it:
Frank has an excellent resume, and submitted it with a well-written cover. A human resources manager’s eye was caught, and she was impressed upon reading the resume. She decides to give Frank a call and set up an interview, but he was in the shower when she called and could not pick up the phone. However, she decided not to leave a message or to call him back when she heard a voicemail message that incorporated profanity-laced clips from a Kanye West song.
Once again, every point of contact you have with a prospective employer is essentially a part of the interview. If you would not sit down with your interviewer and start performing your favorite rapper’s most violent or sexual lyrics, do not leave them on your voicemail message for that same interviewer to hear. Songs, gag messages and most messages containing anything other than your name, phone number, and a request that you leave a message may make your friends laugh, but it is worth your time and effort to change them to something more professional when you are expecting business calls.
On the other side of the coin, make sure not to be so impersonal that you leave the default answering machine in effect, with a computerized voice reading off your number. Business callers will want to be sure that they reached the right person and to know that you took the care to record a businesslike message.
Any point of contact with a potential employer is important when you are looking for a job; whether or not you give a professional impression can win or lose you the opportunity, even if it happens when an interviewer calls your phone and you are not there.
Yes, your resume should be all about you. But it should not read like a long personal narrative or diary entry. Including sentences like “I worked for Businessco Incorporated. I overhauled their computer system. I made great improvements in its operation” sounds amateurish and manages to turn what could be an impressive accomplishment into something that seems like a boast. Keep in mind that employers are looking for a resume that feels like an objective list of achievements, experience and qualifications—not a personal statement.
Most people have some area of their resume that they would rather gloss over quickly rather than explain in detail if given the opportunity. However, the way to handle these spots is not to sweep them under the rug, but rather to spin them as much as possible into assets. A lot of applicants leave sections general and vague in the hope that it will help hide weak areas or cover more ground. In fact, it does the opposite.
Do not just write that you have “experience using business software applications,” but explain which ones you have used and what you have done with them. Do not just say you “worked in the marketing department,” but explain what your responsibilities were. If you had a period when you were not working, think about what you were doing during that time that could apply to the jobs you are applying for now.
Using a generic statement, such as “customer oriented,” without backing that statement up with a result can hurt your resume. Anyone can say they are “customer oriented,” but unless they can back that statement up with evidence to support it, those are just words. Instead of using a generic statement such as “customer oriented,” use a specific example that illustrates how customer oriented you are, for example, “Achieved 100% customer satisfaction over a six-month period by listening to and understanding customer’s needs.”
Your resume is no place for modesty. If a part of your background is important enough to recommend you on a resume, include it in as much detail as you have space for. If not, leave it out.
Nobody makes these on purpose, but they slip by in everyone’s writing. Even small typos in a business document such as a resume can severely hurt your chances. It is often hardest to notice one’s own errors, so it is never a bad idea to have somebody else take a look at your resume and check it for accuracy before you send it along.
A lot of people consider it standard to include a section of “objectives” on a resume, where the applicant lists his or her goals in applying for the job. For the most part, though, it is pretty obvious what your objective is in applying: You want the job. Since that is usually quite clear, the “objectives” section often gets populated by filler that does say much and distracts from the rest of the resume.
There are only two reasons, in my opinion, to have an objective listed on your resume.
1. If you are a student with little to no work experience in a particular field, then it is appropriate to add an objective so that the potential employer can see what type of job you are interested in.
2. If you are changing to a new career after already having worked in a different field. In this case it is helpful to identify what new industry you are pursuing (if it is not already clear from the resume).
I personally think objectives are an outdated tool, and should be replaced with a “Summary of Qualifications” or nothing at all. If it is already apparent from your resume what your end goal is in a position, then repeating the information in an objective or “Summary of Qualifications” can be redundant.
If you are going to use the “Summary of Qualifications,” you should keep it short and to the point. There is no need to provide more than three to four sentences. Also, be sure not to repeat information in your “Summary of Qualifications” that is already listed in other areas on your resume, otherwise you are just wasting page space. If a resume is done well, it should be clear to the employer what your objective is without having to state your objective outright.
References will be an important part of the hiring process for your potential employer, but you do not need to take up valuable space on your resume by listing them. Have them at the ready, though, and indicate a willingness on the resume to provide them. It is always a good idea to have at least three to five references available when applying; at least two of these should be supervisor references. Preferably, these should be from different companies and/or positions and should be from the past five to ten years.
Employers like to see that the references they are checking are not simply from your friends at work or from coworkers who never had the opportunity to work with you closely. Getting references from supervisors who have had the opportunity to oversee your work and know your relationships within the company is a good way for them to do this.
In the business world it is expected that employees will ask their coworkers and superiors for references (and many people will actually be flattered by the request), so there is no reason to avoid being straightforward with your requests. Knowing that your new employer will want to speak with important or supervisory figures can help you tailor your references to give them the best possible impression. Choose the people you have the best chance of getting not just a complimentary but also a detailed and specific reference from.
An employer or recruiter who is checking a reference is looking for three key components:
1. What the reference says in response to the questions about you.
2. The tone with which the reference talks about their experience working with you.
3. The length of the answer that reference gives in response to a question.
Part of being a recruiter or HR person is being able to understand what is not said during a reference. If an employer gives us short, one-word answers in response to the questions we ask or uses a negative tone, that response typically gives us pause. It is not always a deal-breaker if the answers are short or the tone is not that enthusiastic; however, we do take all things into consideration when checking references.
The best potential references to select to give to an employer or recruiter are those people who directly supervised your work. Recruiters and employers for the most part are not interested in talking to peers or personal acquaintances. Once you have chosen the people whose names you are going to give out, it is critical to personally speak with each person before a potential employer calls to check your reference. Additionally, references typically speak more highly of those people with whom they have regularly kept in touch.
Finally, it is important not to list your references on your resume. It is appropriate to have a separate list of your references and to only provide that list once requested by the employer or recruiter. Otherwise, if you include your references on your resume they might be abused by people you do not want calling them.
In today’s market, it is more important than ever to be careful of what you put on your resume and how you word it. One of the biggest errors I see repeatedly occurs when people list a college degree or certificate on their resume—but they have not completed the classes necessary to possess that degree or certificate. Additionally, I see people who call themselves “certified,” but they do not seem to understand what that term means. Neither of these is acceptable and can be grounds for a rescinded job offer and/or termination. This is not always done intentionally; however, it can be done as a way to defraud a potential employer.
The following are a few rules to follow when it comes to listing or not listing degrees, certificates or college units on your resume.
1. Unless you have completed all of the courses necessary for a particular degree or certificate, do not list it on your resume. Listing units that you have completed on your resume can just complicate things and can lead to confusion.
Example: “Attended Cornell University.”
This is not clear as to whether you received a degree and can complicate things.
2. Do not list a degree or certificate on your resume if it is NOT required for that job. For the most part, when you add a degree or certificate to your resume that is not a requirement for the position, you are making the employer’s life harder by giving them one more thing to verify and/or giving them one more reason not to hire you if everything does not check out perfectly.
Lucy has what appears to be an excellent resume. She has longevity at her most recent company, and she has a bachelor’s degree listed as well. The employer immediately responds to her resume and brings her in for an interview. Everyone loves Lucy and they make her an offer contingent upon successful completion of a background check. During the background check, however, it comes back that they are unable to verify her bachelor’s degree. When the recruiter calls to clarify if she does have her bachelor’s degree, Lucy explains that she “has two associate degrees, which she thought counted as a bachelor’s degree.” The company was unable to move forward with hiring her even though they loved her and thought that she had great skills.
The only time you should list a degree if it is not required for the job is if you have a JD. You have to be careful about not listing a JD on your resume, as there can be certain legalities a company has to comply with if you have passed the bar or possess a JD and are employed with that company.
3. It is critical that you never list a degree or certificate on your resume unless you can provide an authentic copy of that degree or certificate.
4. Do not list dates of your degree or certificate on your resume as this can cause people to guess your age and discriminate against you, and/or if you are off by a month or a year and the degree or certificate is verified for a different time period then what you have listed, this can also cause an offer to be rescinded.
Why reinvent the wheel when there are thousands of resume templates out there to choose from? One of my favorite suggestions for creating a new resume is to use the resume templates available in Microsoft Word. The template is very easy to use. Just follow the instructions as shown in the figures and you will have automatic access to hundreds of free resume templates for a variety of professions.
Once you have the template, fill in the blanks and style it to make it your own. Additionally, I suggest adding your LinkedIn URL if you have one. It is important to have your resume proofread by at least one or two other people. You can pay someone hundreds or even thousands of dollars to revise it for you, but I highly encourage you to give it a try on your own first so that way it truly expresses who you are to an employer and saves you money!
Name
Address
Phone Number
LinkedIn URL
email address
Experienced . . .
Company Month/Year–Present
Title
• ACTION VERB FOLLOWED BY RESULT YOU PRODUCED
• Generated over $100,000 in temporary staffing business in 2011.
• Fostered and maintained long-term relationships with key clients regarding their staffing needs.
Title
• Increased personal sales from $370k to $527k in less than one year.
• Revolutionized recruiting practices within the firm by establishing an innovative candidate coaching system that resulted in an average Send Out to Placement ratio of less than 4:1.
• Created a successful niche from scratch in the area of real estate, including over 100k in revenue in less than one year from the world’s largest retail property group.
• Utilized resources such as www.linkedin.com, www.careerbuilder.com, and other similar websites to recruit and network with candidates for various job requisitions.
• Attended various conferences and hiring fairs to direct recruit and source candidates for various positions.
• Managed and worked within a candidate database of over 30,000 candidates to enhance my recruiting efforts.
• Achieved high retention rate from year to year for all candidates placed.
BA Degree
Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint
[email] 
Ext: [phone]
• Eight years of editorial experience in the area of print and online technical communication.
• Appointed chief coordinator on the A. Datum Corporation Editorial Board.
• Developed, researched, and delivered on time the A. Datum Corporation Style Guide.
• Wrote specifications for the Editorial Request Tool, an innovative design using Microsoft Visual Basic to enable the efficient submission of requests to the A. Datum Corporation Editorial Board.
• For more than four years, managed the editorial department at Consolidated Messenger, which consisted of four employees who provided editorial coverage to the company’s then 21 writers.
Technical Editor III–A. Datum Corporation, [City, ST] [Month, Year] – Present
• Develop and publish editorial procedures to support the more than 80 writers who document peer-to-peer services and network strategies in the e-commerce space.
• Specify and prototype tools to increase editorial efficiently in the workplace, and work directly with writing teams to develop customer-focused content.
• Edited content, managed four editors, and provided usability feedback for website development projects that showcased the company’s business-to-business wireless services.
[Month, Year] – [Month, Year]• Researched, wrote, and edited content for the department’s website. Conducted usability studies on the site and provided troubleshooting assistance as needed.
[Month, Year] – [Month, Year]• Interviewed specialists in scientific areas and wrote informative articles on current scientific practices and theory as they pertained to the mission of the museum.
• Purchased articles were printed in the quarterly 32-page magazine published by the museum.
• Wrote and edited feature news articles and press releases for daily metropolitan newspaper under stringent deadlines. Highlights include covering the North Carolina Incident.
Microsoft Visual Basic, HTML, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator
• [Degree Obtained] – [College Name], [City, ST] [Year]
The high importance of a resume means that many job seekers feel compelled to tinker with theirs eternally, changing font sizes and the order of their accomplishments until the cows come home—and never actually applying for any jobs. The reality is that you do not need to do this.
Your resume’s only purpose is to get you the interview, which then gets you the job. It will never do this if it sits around unsent. Get your resume to a point where you are satisfied with it, then stop. Endless revision can be a paralyzing cycle that stops you from ever putting your foot out and applying. Once you are at a reasonably satisfactory point, it makes sense to spend your energy on sending it to employers rather than on going back and making frequent changes. You should only have to do this if the resume as it stands is not working for you.
If you send out ten resumes and get three or more responses, then leave your resume alone. The only purpose of having a resume is to get you interviews. Consider the fact that in the field of direct mail (or what you and I might less charitably refer to as junk mail), a 1% success rate is considered fantastically successful. We tend to expect resumes to do a little better than junk mail letters, but as long as you are steadily generating an appreciable stream of positive responses—then let well enough alone!
When I review a resume, I try to look for what the person is doing right, and point out their strengths. In addition, I look for ways they can enhance their resume through several critiques and modifications. However, not all people need to modify their resumes. In other words, if you are already getting responses from employers regarding your resume, DO NOT TOUCH IT. The only reason to revise and/or revamp your resume is if you are not getting the results you want, that is, your resume is not getting you interviews.
When you are getting interviews in the field you are interested in, you are already ahead of the game and should leave it as it is and put resume writing behind you. Getting in the door through your resume is only half the battle. When you have scored interviews, you then need to focus on your interviewing skills in order to make sure that you meet your ultimate goal of getting the offer.
Yes it does! It is extremely important that you know who sent your resume and when it was sent. One of the downfalls of working with numerous recruiters is that your resume can accidentally be sent to the same company twice. Some companies may disqualify you from the position if this happens as it makes you look unorganized.
It is important to keep meticulous track of where your resume has been sent, by whom it was sent and when it was sent. Many job seekers do not know this, but when a recruiter sends your resume to a company for a position, that recruiter typically has “ownership” of that resume for anywhere from six months to a year. This is why you want to be certain you always know who is sending your resume out, and that you only work with recruiters who are looking out for your best interests.
It can hurt your chances of getting a job if two different parties send your resume to the same company. This is why I recommend making sure that whether it is you or the recruiter that sends out a given resume, it is added with all the appropriate information to your spreadsheet so that you know who you have already applied to and when to follow up.
Keeping track of this information will help you to avoid confusion with the company and/or the agency you are working with and it will make you look like you are on top of your game. Both the company and the agency will appreciate it. It will also help you if you want to resubmit your resume for another position within the same company. If you have this information you can mention it in your cover letter that your resume was submitted for another position on XYZ date.
To wrap up and review, let’s look at some of the biggest dos and don’ts of the resume-writing process. Everyone’s resume will be different, but if you keep to these guidelines and remember the advice I have given you, yours should rise above the rest!
1. Add your LinkedIn URL to your resume if you have a well-put-together LinkedIn profile and recommendations on your profile (which you should!).
2. Have a summary of what makes you qualified (remember—objectives are basically obsolete!) listed at the top of your resume.
3. Have a well-formatted resume with position title and company listed on the left, dates aligned on the right and experience bulleted.
4. List strong adverbs, such as facilitated, managed, organized, etc., followed by your accomplishments.
5. Spell-check your resume and have someone else look it over for grammatical, punctuation and/or formatting errors.
1. List your reference contact information on your resume.
2. Include a photo or any bizarre graphics (unless you are in graphic design or related field).
3. Use ALL CAPS or all italics to write your resume.
4. Lie about ANYTHING on your resume because it can all be verified.
5. Use different fonts and/or different sizes in the same sections. For example, if your section titles such as “Experience” or “Skills” are in size 18 Arial and bold, then that should be the same for every section head. The same goes for the font and size used for your bullet points.
I am often asked what a good cover letter should look like, and whether cover letters are still relevant in today’s market. First let me say that the old version of the cover letter, which was submitted separately from your resume as an addendum, has become obsolete. It is rare to have a company request or want to read an applicant’s cover letter in addition to his or her resume. It is also unusual for an employer to ask for a faxed cover letter or resume, let alone a “snail mail” cover letter and resume. Some clients may request a writing sample, but this is not the same as a cover letter.
The cover letter of today is typically included in the body of the email you use to submit your resume. When sending an email cover letter to a potential employer with your resume attached, be sure that the cover letter/email is short and simple and that it encapsulates the themes that you want your resume to highlight. It helps to directly address any potential concerns, such as visible recent job instability or gaps in your employment history, that an employer might have.
The following is a sample that you can use as a reference when drafting a letter:
Dear Sir or Madam:
I am very interested in working with XXX in a XXX position. Enclosed is a copy of my resume for your consideration and review. I feel that my X and Y skills could be a tremendous asset to your company.
I have spent the last 10+ years as a Title Here in the xxx field. Though I thoroughly enjoyed my time in my last position, I am ready to pursue new horizons.
I am committed to contributing my expertise to XXX, while learning and developing new skills that will facilitate company growth and expansion. My combination of in-depth skilled training and practical experiences at various companies makes me a unique candidate to contribute to the efficiency of the organization. I pride myself on fostering a positive mental attitude both in myself and the team around me.
Should you have any additional questions about my background, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to meeting with you in person to discuss my qualifications and to discuss how I can be a resource for your team. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
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