Sunday, September 7, 2008
Preparing Your Resume
An effective resume will help you put your best foot forward on paper. It is a summary of who you are, what your have done, and what skills you possess.
The purpose of the resume is not to get you a job, but to persuade the employer to grant you an interview.
There are no absolute when it comes to writing a resume. The quality of your resume is one of the few things in a job search over which you have total control. Create a resume that will effectively market you to your targeted employers.
How do I get started?
The first thing you need to do is determine which skills you posses that you want to emphasize on your resume. Depending on your unique combination of experience, classes, jobs, community involvement and activities, you will determine which format is most suitable for you. The goal is to get noticed by the employer, not to give a lengthy and complete history of your life. If something is not “selling you”, or if it is obsolete or repetitive, you should treat it as extraneous information.There are 4 main types of resumes:
- Chronological
This format is the most frequently used, and employers prefer it because it is easy to read. The chronological format lists your education and experience in a reverse chronological order and concentrates on your experience; where you worked, dates, responsibilities and achievements. Chronological resumes are effective for people who are just starting out in a career, or who want to advance in the same field.
- Functional
The functional resume is most appropriate when you want to focus more on the skills you possess in specific areas, and less on the places where worked. It groups your skills under headings and focuses on your accomplishments within these skill areas. These skills and accomplishments are listed separately from your work history. People often choose a functional resume when they are trying to make a switch from one career area to another. A functional format lists skills, regardless of where you acquiredthem. These skills sections are followed by a list of places worked/job titles and dates
- Combination
This format is a combination the functional and chronological resumes. It lists job specific skills relevant to the objective, and is followed by a list of the employers and job titles, together with a description of the main duties/ achievements.
- Targeted
Because your resume will have to compete with many others and employers have a very short time to devote to it, it is important that you tailor your resume to the specific position. The more closely you match the position, the more likely you are to keep the employer’s attention. It might take extra time, but creating a resume that is targeted to a particular position will be very much worth the effort. Look at the job description and the skills it requires, and then proceed to address those skills in your resume.
What information should be included in a resume?
Essential elements
Apart from your contact information, none of the following elements are absolute musts. They can be very helpful, however.
- Name
- Address(es)
- Telephone number(s)
- Email address
- Education. In reverse chronological order, list degree(s), major/minor, name of the awarding institution, date of graduation (or projected date)
- Experience (Including employment, internships, volunteer, school projects, research)
- Accreditations/licenses (If applicable)
- Association memberships (If applicable)
- Honors/awards (If applicable)
Optional Elements
Objective. A Job objective is a clear and concise statement of the kind of position you are seeking. If you know exactly what you want to do, an objective statement will be helpful. An objective that is too narrow may screen you out of similar positions that might still interest you, so avoid being restrictive, or change your objective for each job.
Summary of qualifications. This is a brief set of statements regarding your qualifications, skills, and experience: three to five bullets of “must know’ information about you. The summary is most helpful when it highlights skills, traits, or experiences that are directly relevant to the employer. Keep in mind that the “must know” information should be such from the employer’s point of view. They might not need to know that you are the world surfing champion for the past five summers.
- GPA (when over 3.00. You can also split major/overall GPAs)
- Computer skills
- Research skills
- Lab skills
- Personal interests (add only if relevant to the position)
- Relocation interest (only if relevant to job/industry)
- Foreign languages
Elements to avoid
- Titles like: “resume”.
- Photographs, pictures, color ink, excessive graphics, charts and graphs.
- The sentence “references available upon request”. This info is not selling you; it only wastes space on the page.
- Reference contact information. The resume should talk about you, not your references. Put your references on a separate sheet. Match the two documents by using the same paper and fonts (More info on references in the reference section of this document).
- High school information, unless very relevant to the position you are applying for, and unless it is not superseded by more recent info.
- Salary history
- Abbreviations (unless universally used in your field—this is especially true for computer programming)
- Your age, marital status, sex, religion, race, national origin, or physical description.
- Reasons for leaving a position
Helpful hints
- Be concise – limit your resume to one page. A two-page resume is perfectly acceptable, provided you have significant relevant professional experience. If you think your resume needs to be longer than on page but are not sure, check with Career Services. We will help you decide what to do.
- Your resume is not an application for employment. It is a marketing document. Resumes are not meant to be as detailed and specific as job applications. Your resume should not include everything there is to know about you. It should sell you based on your qualifications. Leave out irrelevant information, such as supervisors’ addresses, or reasons for leaving the position.
- Proofread your resume a number of times. Spelling errors are not acceptable. Because your resume is a marketing piece, it needs to be absolutely perfect. Have several different people proofread your document.
- In describing your experience, focus on your accomplishments, rather than duties of the position. What your job description says is less important than what you did. Describe and quantify the results of your work (example: “met 150% of quota each month”, rather than “assisted customers with sales”.
- Use action verbs and the active voice—Avoid phrases such as responsible for, duties included, and the like. Avoid pronouns and full sentences; use short statements and fragments instead. Try to begin them with an action verb.
- Use the jargon of your profession, but avoid using acronyms, unless they are widely used and understood in your sector.
- Omit information that might exclude you from an interview or raise unwanted questions. If you are in doubt, consult career services staff.
- Never lie, exaggerate or misrepresent facts.
- Your resume should be visually appealing. Make it easy to read, organized, with wide margins and clear headings. A balanced text is the key to a visually appealing resume. Margins should be proportional (generally 1” on all sides). Leave plenty of white space.
- Use true type fonts that are easy to read: Times New Roman, Arial, or Palatino. Use a font size between 10 and 12 point.
- Use bullets, bold face, italics, and all caps to make your resume easier to read.
- Do not use graphics and shading
- Never staple your resume, or print the second page on the back of the first one. Use a paper clip.
- Print your resume on high quality paper. Use 25% cotton content, or ask for resume paper at the copy store. Light, non-textured colors photocopy best. Stick to conservative shades: white, ivory, light gray, buff. Stay away from pinks, greens, yellows and blues. Match the cover letter, resume and reference sheet by using the same headers, fonts, and paper.
- Have your resume laser printed onto your stationery (make sure the seal is right-side up!). Ink-jet printers should be avoided, because they usually are not crisp enough.
- Prepare two or more versions of your resume, and store them in your computer as different files.
- Once you have a resume, keep it current! It takes a good deal of time and patience to write an effective resume. If you keep your resume current, you will be able to react quickly to unexpected opportunities!
Action Verbs
In addition to using action verbs in your resume, try to use key words. Key words are terms used by employers to describe the job you are applying for. Key words work for the people receiving your resume, because they see words that are familiar and relevant. Key words are also useful when your resume is entered into a searchable database. When searching and sorting through hundreds of resumes, employers will most likely search by key words that they have used in their job descriptions.
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Possible headings for resume sections
When describing your education:
- Education
- Educational Training
- Education al Skill
- Areas of Knowledge
- Areas of Competency
- Educational Background
- Professional Accomplishments
- Competencies and skills
- Work Experience
- Related Work Experience
- Relevant Work Experience
- Employment Contributions
- Internships
- Work history
- Lab experience
- Programming experience
- System administration experience
- Hospital experience
- Pharmacy experience
- Sales experience
- Volunteer experience
- Relevant projects
- Selected accomplishments
- Professional Contributions
- Professional Efforts
- Personal Accomplishments
- Achievement Highlights
- Outstanding Achievements
- Honors and Awards
- Volunteer Work Experience
- Related Interests
- Professional Memberships
- Extracurricular Activities
- Leadership Positions
- Affiliations
E-mailing your resume:
ASCII Format
ASCII is the acronym for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange". ASCII is the simplest format in which text can appear on any computer (ASCII text is not application or platform dependent). ASCII is the single format for text that can be utilized and read universally. Email is often sent in ASCII, so recipients can read the message, no matter what platform they are using. ASCII has a few limitations: For instance, it is not possible to boldface or italicize text in ASCII format. Below are some tips for enhancing your online ASCII resume.
- To create your resume in ASCII, just type it up in your customary word-processing application and save it as a "text only" document (example: xyzresume.txt)
- Spacing in ASCII can be tricky. Always use the spacebar and avoid using the tab button.
- Watch the margins and alignment. ASCII defaults all text to the left hand margin; for centering or indenting the spacebar must be used (do not use the tab!).
- Special characters are often not recognized and do not transfer to ASCII. Try to avoid their usage. Basically, if the symbol does not appear directly on your keyboard it will not be readable in ASCII.
- Bullet-points, boldfaces, and italics should not be used; they are not recognized by ASCII.
- Fonts. The font of your text will become whatever is set on the computer on which it appears.
Attachments
When e-mailing your resume, you can send your document as an attachment. That way, you can keep the attractive visuals that ASCII can’t support. Attachments can create problems. We strongly recommend that you include a text version of your resume directly into the body of your email, in addition to the resume attachment.
When sending your resume by email, treat the text of the message as a cover letter (remember that email communication tends to be shorter than regular mail correspondence). Then, paste in a text version of your resume inside the body of the message. When attaching your resume, always state what type of file you are sending. Use software (and a version of it) that the recipient also has, or your file won’t be accessible. Some employers might be weary of viruses, and might not open any kind of attachment. Other recipients might use older email readers that do not support attachments online. If at all possible, ask before sending your resume.
Scannable Resumes
Leading businesses and organizations will oftentimes utilize electronic applicant tracking, or resume scanning. Your resume can be scanned into a computer system and stored into a database. Your resume is scanned into the computer as an image. Then OCR (optical character recognition) software looks at the image to distinguish every letter and number and creates a text file. Then artificial intelligence "reads" the text and extracts important information about you such as your name, address, phone number, work history, years of experience, education, and skills.
When preparing a scannable resume, focus on format and content. Use standard fonts and crisp, dark type so the OCR can recognize every letter. The scannable resume has plenty of facts for the artificial intelligence to extract--the more skills and facts you provide, the more opportunities you'll have for your skills to match available positions.
To maximize scannability:
- Use white or light-colored, 8 11/2 x 11 paper, printed on one side only.
- Provide a laser printed original. Avoid dot matrix printouts or low quality copies.
- Do not fold or staple.
- Use standard typefaces such as Helvetica, Futura, Optima, Universe, Times, Palatino, New Century, Schoolbook, and Courier.
- Use a font size of 10 to 12 points.
- Don't condense spacing between letters.
- Use boldface and/or all capital letters for section headings as long as the letters don't touch each other.
- Avoid italics, underlines, shadows, and reverse (white letters on black background).
- Avoid vertical and horizontal lines, graphics, and boxes.
- Place your name at the top of the page on its own line.
Content
When searching for specific experience, recruiters and managers will search for key words, usually nouns such as: writer, BA, marketing collateral, Society of Technical Communication, Spanish (language fluency), San Diego, etc. Make sure you describe your experience with concrete words rather than vague descriptions.
To maximize "hits":
- Use enough key words to define your skills, experience, education, professional affiliation, etc.
- Use more than one page if necessary. The computer can easily handle multiple-page resumes, and it uses all of the information it extracts from your resume to determine if your skills match available positions.
- Use jargon and acronyms specific to your industry (spell out the acronyms for human readers).
- If you have the space, describe your interpersonal traits and attitude. Key words could include: skilled in time management, dependable, high energy, leadership etc.
References
References should be listed on a separate sheet following the resume. Strive to have anywhere between 3-5 references and include the person's name, company and title, mailing address, telephone number, and email address. It is not necessary to include information about your relationship with your reference or the length of time you have known them. References should be people who have seen you in a work or classroom setting and can positively comment on your work ethic. This may include past employers and college professors. You may also list someone who can positively comment on your character or integrity. This reference may be from someone who has known you for a very long time such as a friend of the family. Always remember to ask permission before listing someone as a reference.
The reference sheet should be placed on the same color and type of paper that you used for your cover letter and resume. While the font size might be different, the font style should match that on your cover letter and resume as well.
Additional help
Career Services staff will be happy to help you with your resume. If you would like their assistance, call 471-6700 or come by PAI 5.03 to schedule an appointment. Have a draft resume already completed before you show up for your appointment.
There are many books and websites that have additional information and examples of good resumes. In the Natural Sciences Career Services library, the following books may be checked out:
- 175 High Impact Resumes
- Electronic Resumes for the New Job Market
- The Global Resume and CV Guide
- Internet Resumes
- Proven Resumes
- Resumes for College Students and Recent Graduates
- Resumes for Dummies
- Resumes that Knock ‘Em Dead
http://resume.monster.comHere are some more sample resumes:
http://www.jobweb.com/Resources/Library/Interviews_Resumes/default.htm
http://www.wetfeet.com/advice/resumes.asp
