Resume Writing Tips

Think of yourself, your skills, experience, education, work ethic, personality, etc. as a unique product/service that you have to offer. You are the “Seller”. Employers have needs for employees with specific skills, experience, etc. They are the “Buyer”. You want to find the Buyer who will give you the best “Price” (salary and benefits) for your product/service.

Now, think of your resume as the advertisement for your product. It’s not the story of your life or even the story of your career. Its purpose is to show the Buyer how you might fill their needs and create enough interest that they would invite you for an interview. Keeping this in mind, the resume needs to be concise, factual, easy to scan for the important information and visually attractive.

General Ideas

Employers receive hundreds of resumes a day, so they will spend about 20 seconds deciding whether or not to keep each one. Your resume needs to make a great impression. Follow these general guidelines for best results:

• Resumes should be no longer than 2 pages!
• Make sure there are no spelling, grammar or capitalization errors. Check the correct spelling of technical terms. Don’t rely on spell check. Spell check cannot tell if you mean “there” or “their”, so will not catch the error as long as the word is spelled correctly.
• Use a font with “feet” such as Times New Roman or CG Times rather than straight-line fonts such as Arial. The eye flows more easily over fonts with feet. The size of the font should be 11 or 12 points.
• Use bold, italics and capitalization sparingly to highlight different sections or separate jobs. No one wants to read an entire resume in italics.
• There should be lots of white space on your resume.
• Resumes should not be written in first person (e.g. I did this) or third person (e.g. Mr. Smith did this).
• Be consistent in tense and style throughout resume.
• Be HONEST – truth in advertising. Employers will often hire candidates who don’t have all of the required skills or education, but if they catch you falsifying information, it’s over.
• Just as advertisers need to customize their message for different buyers by emphasizing different benefits and features of their products, you may also have to customize your resume for various openings. Go over job ads carefully. If a skill is listed in the job ad and you have experience with that skill, make sure it is in your resume.

Contact Information

• Make sure your name is prominently displayed.
• Use only the phone numbers that you want potential employers to use. If it’s risky to get calls at work, don’t list your work number.
• This is not the place to use your “cute” e-mail address such as babycakes@aol.com or flemdog@yahoo.com. Set up a separate e-mail address that is some version of your name. Don’t use your work e-mail address.

Objective

The objective hurts more than it helps and it takes up valuable space, so it’s best to skip it. The ideas and issues that would normally be addressed in an objective could be addressed in the cover letter. If you feel you must have an objective, make sure it is specific and pertains to the job for which you are applying.

Work Experience

This is the most important section of your resume, so it should also be the most prominent section and should start on the first page of your resume.

• Jobs must be listed in chronological order with the most recent job first.
• The name of the company, job title and dates of employment should be clearly displayed.
• Dates should be written in months and years.
• If you worked at a company as a contractor, that should be indicated.
• Be specific about what you accomplished at each job, not just your responsibilities. Try to show how you saved time or money, improved processes, etc.
• Be sure to note how you used the major technologies at each job. Many companies use software to scan resumes and if you don’t include the key words they are searching, your resume may be overlooked.
• Don’t assume a technical person will screen your resume.
• Use strong action words to describe your work such as designed, configured, installed, created, supported, etc.
• Use bullet points to make your resume easy to scan. Each job should have at least three bullet points, but not too many.
• Only include the last 10 years on resume.

Education

• Recent grads can display Education before Work Experience.
• Indicate degrees earned as well as the name of college or university and major area of study. Year of graduation is not necessary.
• If you are currently working on your degree, indicate your major area of study, name of school and “Degree expected in Month of Year”.

Summaries and Accomplishments (Optional Section)

It’s better to list specific accomplishments under the job in the Work Experience section. If you feel you must have this section, keep it brief and specific. If you describe yourself in terms of soft skills, be sure to have examples to back up your claims.

Skill Summaries (Optional Section)

This can be useful to list a lot of key words in a small area, but it is important that your resume shows major skills within the Work Experience section as well. If you want to use this section, keep it brief and specific. Make sure the names of all products used are spelled correctly.

References

• 99% of applicants include the line “References available upon request”. This really isn’t necessary. Employers assume that you will provide references or you will probably not be considered for their job. Leave out this section – it will save a bit of space.
• Do not include the actual references on your resume. You should bring a list of reference names and phone numbers with you to interviews and be prepared to give that information at that time.
• It’s a good idea to contact your references ahead of time to get permission to use them as references and make sure they will say positive things about you.

Personal, Hobbies and/or Interests (Optional)

There are pros and cons to using this section. How you spend your time reveals a lot about your interests, beliefs and character. Generally, this information is beneficial because it shows that you are a well-rounded person and have interests outside of work. If you and the screener have similar interests and beliefs, it can be a plus. If the screener does not share your interests or beliefs, he or she may subconsciously reject your resume even though you may be qualified for the role. Just be aware of what you are revealing and determine if you want employers to be aware of your interests and beliefs at this point in the process. Information such as your age, marital status and information about children is risky. Employers cannot ask this information, so there is no need to share up front.