The resume in brief
A resume is a one- to two-page document summarizing your career objectives, professional experiences and achievements, as well as your educational background. The resume heading should contain your name, address and contact information. The resume body should be broken into the following sections: career objective, profile and/or summary, professional experience, achievements, scholastics, and references.
Your career objective should be brief, up to two sentences, and it should give your potential employers an idea of how you wish to move forward in your professional life. A concise profile or summary should discuss who you are and how your skills and experience best apply to the job you are interested in. The summary, as well as other parts of your resume, should not contain personal information that discloses ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status, age, living situations or any other personal information that is not directly related to your career.
It’s your professional representative
Personal profile and/or summary should only contain a few well-written sentences that convey what you can bring to the table in terms of the specific job. Use this section to attract an employer’s attention, but don’t go overboard by trying to be too creative; keep it professional. Your experience listing should include information on one to five jobs you’ve held, starting with your current or last job, and listing previous positions in chronological order.
The listing should include a date range of your employment, name of the companies or person(s) you have worked for, and the city and state where a referenced place of employment is located (full address of employment is not necessary). List your title and your main responsibilities, with emphasis on duties that are applicable to the type of work you are seeking.
Your education should include college, graduate and post-graduate work, as well as any courses or professional certifications that are relevant to your career development. Achievements, volunteer positions, publications and interests should only be listed if they apply to your professional work experience. References should be listed if requested; best practices suggest not to list generic statements about references being available upon request as this is understood.
Attention to detail will serve you well
In the competitive, internet-driven world of job searches, your resume represents you to potential employers; and it serves as your tool to attract attention, get the interview and/or get a job. A great resume will make you stand out from other candidates by showcasing your aptitudes. Think of your resume as your sales pitch, since you need to sell yourself in the best possible way. Invest some time and research into developing your resume.
You will want to make sure that your resume is error free, so double check your grammar and spelling, make sure that all company and school names and cities are spelled correctly. A resume containing errors, no matter how minimal, will give your potential employer the impression that you lack attention to detail, that you don’t take time to double check your work, and that you are a poor communicator.
Additionally, make sure that your resume is formatted well. Stick to basic fonts, like Arial and Times New Roman; and keep the font size and color standard. Do not use large fonts or multi-colors in your resume! And don’t go overboard with bold, italicized, or large-cap text. Keep your format consistent and make sure that the resume looks great when viewed online as well as in hard copy print.
In short, a good one gets the job done
Keep your resume to one or two pages, as any additional pages could give an impression that you either don’t know how to concisely summarize your education and experience, or that you are listing unnecessary information for the sake of taking up space. If you’ve never written a resume before, reference books, Internet resources and assistance from a professional resume writing service are all available and can easily be accessed.
A well-written resume can make the difference between being stuck at your current job and getting an interview to land the job of your dreams, or as close to it as you can get depending on what your dream job is.
