What Is A Resume?
- A brief summary of your skills, accomplishments, and history as it relates to a potential job;
- A selling tool used to get an interview; and
- A way to highlight your strengths while leaving off negative or damaging details.
- There are negative details and other damaging points are left off;
- There are no hard and fast “rules” for constructing resumes, but there are general guidelines that should be followed.
Why Include A Resume?
Sometimes a resume is optional: Include it anyway because it
- demonstrates how seriously you take the position;
- is something you can keep on hand to summarize your strengths & accomplishments;
- will better prepare you for questions during interviews and boost your overall confidence.
The Information Needed For Creating A Great Resume
- Job Opportunity for Which You Are Applying
- Personal Profile
Who are you? How do you fit that job? - Personal Information
Name
Address
Email address
Cell phone
Home phone - Education
Name of each school
City and state
Dates attended
GPA (if excellent)
Certification or degree - Recent Places of Employment*
Your title
Name of company or institute
Address
Dates of employment
Duties and accomplishments - Key skills
- Presentations and/or publications
- Awards and honors
- Professional and/or service organizations
*In order to apply online, you might need your supervisor’s name, title, company address, email and/or phone number.
Types Of Resumes
Chronological
- Most common resume type.
- Work history is given priority.
- Listed in reverse chronological order, starting with current or most recent.
- Education and other experience is typically placed underneath.
Functional
- Skills, achievements, and other important highlights are given priority.
- Education typically placed at top, work history placed toward the bottom.
- Best suited for:
- New graduates with little relevant work experience, -OR-
- Those with much experience & who have accomplished much in their field.
Formatting The Chronological Resume
- Less is more!
- Avoid overusing different font sizes, font types, bold, italics, underlining, and other stylistic options.
- Use 10 – 12 point font throughout. (You can go a bit bigger for contact information.)
- Stick to a formal font type: Times New Roman or Arial are great choices.
- White space is good!
- White space keeps things organized and easy to read.
- Leave blank lines between different sections.
- Set page margins to 1” – 0.5”.
Should It Be Only One Page?
- The number of pages may depend on your work experience in relation to the job opening.
- A second page is okay:
- General rule – if your next page is LESS THAN HALF full, pare down to the fewest amount of pages possible.
- Example: If the second page has only four lines, find a way to reformat so that the resume is only 1 page.
- Tight and focused is better than wordy and irrelevant.
Employment Section
- List jobs in reverse chronological order, present or most recent job first.
- Going back 1-15 years is okay, especially if you feel an older job is particularly relevant to the job you are applying for.
- If you held many similar jobs during that time, avoid listing all of them. Stick to the most recent 5 years.
- List your duties & accomplishments for each job title. 3-5 bullet points is perfect.
- Be sure to use action verbs at the beginning of each sentence and avoid using “I”.
