The Top 10 Writing Your Resume

Originally Submitted on 5/1/2000.

As a former consultant who made a living by job hunting, as someone who changed jobs a number of times, and who has worked for years with people who were looking for jobs, I would like to share my experiences about what worked for me and for others I have helped.

1. Understand the function of your resume.

The major function of a resume is to get you an interview. It is an important tool, but remember that it's just a job hunter's glorified business card. (See my other top ten on organizing a job hunt at: http://www.essentialcoaching.com/writings/b10JobHunting.html.)

2. Find a format you like and use it as a guide -- not a straightjacket.

Make your resume fit you. Emphasize your strengths, and de-emphasize your weaknesses. People generally expect to see certain things in a certain way on a resume, but if the norms don't fit, then don't follow them. There's no law requiring you to put a job objective at the front, all previous job experience in reverse chronological order, and education at the end.

3. Pay attention to white space (margins, spacing between headings, textual lines, etc.).

Make your resume attractive and easy to read. Having ample white space and a decent sized font help that.

4. Keep your resume to one or two pages.

Shrinking the margins or using a small font is not a reasonable approach (see the previous point). For people with a lot of work experience, this can be difficult. The thing to remember is that 20 year old experience is probably not that important any more. One way to keep the older, interesting conversation pieces from your past on your resume is to have an area at the end of the experience section with a title like "Professional Experience Prior to 1970." Then put a few bullets there.

5. Place the most important points prominently and get the really important things on the first page.

Don't assume that your reader will read a lot of text or even get to page 2.

6. Write in active, not passive, voice and use short sentences.

Using bulleted lists can be good device. That way you don't need complete sentences and can save room. Start each bullet with an active verb. Vary your word choices. Computer programmers are always "writing" software, but perhaps they sometimes "develop" or "create" or "implement" programs.

7. Be bold. Extol your strengths. Toot your own horn.

This is your resume. If you don't tell others how great you are, then how will they know? Be honest but don't exaggerate. A good rule of thumb for deciding whether to take credit for something is: If you would get the blame for a project's failure, then it's fair to take credit for its success.

8. Be concrete and quantify where possible.

"Improved sales" isn't nearly as impressive as "increased sales by 40% in the first year and 75% in the second year."

9. Use bold, italics, and underscoring sparingly. Too much is distracting and devalues the things you really want to highlight.

This is something that agencies tend to do more than individuals. While using bold or underline is supposed to draw attention to something, when every buzzword and technical term is highlighted the very points that were to be highlighted become lost in the noise and the resume becomes harder to read.

10. Make your resume look professional and appropriate for the kind of position you're seeking. Be proud of your resume -- it represents you.

Proofread your resume carefully. Better yet, have someone else proofread it. Spell checkers don't catch mistakes like "to, too, two" and grammar checkers sometimes get confused.

Do something that will set your resume apart from all the others but keep it appropriate for your profession. For example, an advertising graphic designer and a computer software engineer would have different requirements for a professional looking resume.

Remember the main point of the resume: to get you an interview. Having said that, the resume can serve another function. It can give the interviewer a framework (and a crutch) for your discussion, but that's another story for another top ten.

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