RESUME GUIDELINES

The resume is a focused summary of the qualifications, skills and background that you have to offer a potential employer. It is an accomplishment-oriented document. A resume forms the first impression an employer will have of you and represents you in your absence. The primary purpose of a resume is to obtain an interview. Resumes need to be:

• Brief and easy to read.
  
• Concise action phrases rather than complete sentences.
  
• For scanned resumes, use keywords; be specific in naming skills; avoid lines, graphics, columns and italic type.
  
• Avoid use of personal pronouns.
  
• Well-organized headings and presentation that encourage the reader's attention.
  
• Boldface type, italic type or capitalization used very selectively to highlight important parts of your resume (e.g. your name, major, position titles). Remember that what you highlight is what you especially want an employer to read; don't overdo a good thing. Too much highlighting can be confusing.
  
• Balanced use of blank space and margins.
  
• Rough draft critiqued by a Career Counselor or other knowledgeable person. Resumes must be perfect with no spelling, typing, or grammatical errors.
  
• One (preferably) or two pages. Use a laser printer for quality results. Dot matrix not acceptable. Print on one side only.
  
• Duplicate at a printer or professional copy center. Select good quality 8 1/2 x 11 paper in off-white, beige, gray or other business-like color.
  

Resume Outline

Begin by filling out a resume worksheet. It will help you organize the information you will be using in the resume. A good resume will include:

• Education College:
  Include: Area of concentration; major and minor; indicate you are a candidate for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science; expected date of graduation; academic achievements, honors, awards; extra-curricular activities (sports, clubs, committees).
  
  
• Computer Background:
  List all computer languages you know and computer systems you are familiar with. Also, add special computer related experiences, i.e. owning a personal computer, writing programs, etc.
  
  
• Work Experience:
  Include all work experiences, full or part-time, paid or volunteer. In reverse chronological order, the most recent being first, list the position you held, specific duties, place of employment and location, and dates of employment. The description of the duties of each job should emphasize the tasks performed, indicating specialties learned, skills developed, scope of responsibility and results achieved. Of particular importance are experiences illustrating leadership potential, organizational ability, communication skills, ingenuity and teamwork. Use action verbs that answer the question "What did I do?"!
  
  
• Community and Service Activities:
  Include all community and service related activities you are presently involved.
  
  
• References:
  Under the heading "References" the statement, "References will be supplied upon request" will suffice. (It is important, however, that you are prepared to give at least three references when filling out your company application form).
  

Action Verbs

Added Administered Analyzed Applied Assembled Assisted Attained Bought Built Calculated Compiled Conducted Constructed Coordinated Created Debugged Delivered Demonstrated Designed Developed

Developed Devised Directed Documented Drafted Drew Earned Edited Established Evaluated Explored Fabricated Filed Hammered Implemented Improved Increased Initiated Installed Invented

Investigated Laid-out Leveled Maintained Measured Observed Operated Ordered Organized Performed Planned Planted Prepared Produced Programmed Provided Purchased Remodeled Repaired Reported

Researched Restored Revised Saved Shot Sold Solved Sponsored Spread Stapled Studied Supervised Taught Tested Traced Trained Transmitted Verified Washed Wrote

Types of Resumes

A resume well written and structured can bring high paying jobs to your door steps. It can be treated as a Sales Material to sell your experience, qualifications, talents, etc. There are many formats of resumes you can choose from. While selecting a format for your resume, give attention to the layout and structure of the resume. It should match with your experience level and skills.

A resume should not be very detailed, but a summary of what you have achieved in your professional life. It is a history about your work with past employers, your tenure with each employer, educational qualifications and other personal details.

Experience should be in the order last one first. Show the time period in the organization and highlight your specific responsibilities in the organization. Your job title is very important here. It should be in bold letters. The resume should show your overall contribution to the organization and how it helped the organization's growth. Once you complete describing the experience you can add your educational qualifications and other details as it fits the resume.

There are two basic formats that you will read about if you do research on resume writing:

• The Chronological format
  
• The Functional format
  

Both have their strengths, but the chronological format is by far the more common and accepted of the two. Here's an overview of each format and which one is best for various circumstances.

Chronological

The chronological format lists your prior employers in order, beginning with the most recent one first and working backward (this is because hiring managers are most interested in your recent experience).

When you are developing your resume, bear in mind that this is by far the most common format used and is the one most hiring managers are used to seeing and prefer. It reads the most naturally and makes it easy for the hiring manager to see how your career has progressed. When in doubt, use the chronological format. It's the easiest to write and is the correct choice most of the time.

Functional

The functional format focuses on listing your skills and education first and your employment history at the end. When you use the functional format, no details of your various jobs are given except the dates you were employed at each company, in date order—most recent job first. The emphasis of it is on your skills, not your experience.

The functional format is the best one to use if you've had a lot of previous jobs and want to highlight your skills and experience and downplay the number of employers. It is best used for lower level and entry positions, which tend to look for specific skills rather than long years of experience. There is also a third format you may have read about, called a Combination format. It combines the skills-based format with the employer based. It does this by listing your most important skills on top, followed by the traditional Chronological format.

Gaps in your qualifications or experience raise alarm bells with prospective employers and require a convincing explanation in order to convince the employer that you are the ideal candidate (see "Reasons for Gaps in Your Resume" section below).

Resume Lay Out

Regardless of what type of resume style you go for, one thing that you should always adhere to is ensuring its layout is easy-to-follow. One of the most common mistakes the majority of people make when writing a resume is cluttering the page with information, and not following any kind of order.

Keep the information short and to the point, you do not want to wander off into rambling sentences. Yes, you may be interested in your hobbies, but that does not mean a potential employer is, so stick to the facts that are relevant for the job you're going for. The most common format has your employment details first, then scholastic, and finally personal. Use bullet points as well, as they help to break up the text.

What information should you include?

One of the most difficult things to do when writing your resume is deciding what information you should put on there. After all, it needs to be snappy enough to gain attention, yet informative enough to garner enough interest to get you an interview. Many people who write professional resumes for a living suggest that the best way to decide this is to do it on a "per job" basis.

What this means is that obviously every job is different, and will require alternative skill sets than another job by a different company. Therefore, put yourself in your potential employer's shoes, and ask what skills you would be interested in the candidate having. For example, it's no good writing about your computer skills if you are going for a job as a chef. The best and most professional resumes are pertinent to the exact job in question, even if it means having 10 or more different resumes to choose from.

Most importantly, highlight your strengths. An interviewer will decide whether or not to see you by how qualified you are for the position on offer. Even if you do not have the relative expertise for their company's business, if you can show that you're an extremely quick learner who has adapted in all your previous jobs to be successful, that will come across as a major positive point. Do not be afraid to sell yourself.

Reasons for Gaps in Your Resume

• You may have had to leave employment for personal reasons like ill health, financial constraints or personal commitments. The prospective employer will closely examine the reason for the break in your employment. They need to see that the same conditions do not persist and are not likely to affect your job performance
  
  
• Non-Performance or sub-standard job performance. Performers are marketable. Non-performers are not. A prospective employer needs to be convinced that you have taken adequate steps (through additional training or self-improvement courses to overcome challenges).
  
  
• Leaving a job for 'personal reasons' could be the biggest nightmare - especially if these pertain to what you perceived as discriminatory or unfair treatment or if you had personal commitments that affected your job performance. These reasons will be examined closely to see if they had any substance or basis. Discipline or personality problems could be a nightmare for a prospective employer.
  
  
• Having gaps in your resume is no reason for you to be doomed to underpaying, unsatisfactory jobs. Your ability to rewrite your resume to convince a prospective employer that you have circumvented or tackled the problems you have faced, will be crucial in getting a good job that will rebuild your resume.
  
  
• Show the time spent on the job in terms of years, (i.e. show the year you started the job and the year you left). Do not specify the month. This will help hide a few months of unemployment, though this could easily be exposed through a couple of focused questions by the interviewer.
  
  
• Have a good explanation for breaks in your career, especially if it was time off to do things like fund-raising or raising children or traveling. Try and project these breaks as breaks that helped build your qualifications, experience or personality, such as mind broadening travel or an internship abroad. Don't let your prospective employer assume that it was laziness, bad habits, an unsteady personality or lack of commitment or ambition.
  
  
• Don't let your resume reflect the opposite (i.e. too many jobs). Rapid job-hopping or a variety of jobs will reflect a personality that is not able to settle down or a personality that has no focus. Commitment and focus is what potential employers are looking for.
  
  
• Highlight pertinent experience: focus your resume in such a way that you highlight the experience that is pertinent to the job for which you are applying. Noting your experience in years rather than months will also help to focus on your skills rather than your experience. Erase any jobs that were for too short a term, especially if they gave you experience that is not required in the job that you are applying for.
  
  
• Highlight qualifications, especially if you can connect them to the job that you are seeking. Emphasize your professional qualifications rather than your conventional qualifications. Additionally, emphasizing skills over experience will also help your resume.
  
  
• Do not lie or gloss over a bad past. The world is a small place and HR departments tend to have an unspoken agreement between them to be honest about why an employee left. Your glossing over reasons for unemployment can easily be cross-checked. Your resume does not need to have a detailed explanation for the gap in your career, but you should try and give it a positive or attractive twist.
  

Explaining gaps in your resume is not easy because the element of truth should be maintained, yet your resume should still identify you as a viable candidate. Follow the tips above and you will be successful.

Objective

The objective is the first thing people will see when they read your resume. A good objective will be concise, upbeat and grab the reader's attention.

It needs to be tailored to each position you apply for. You need to tell the reader exactly why you want to work for them. If you want to write the perfect objective, here are some tips:

• This is the place to describe the kind of job you're seeking. Keep the objective neutral. Don't talk about your own desires, but instead state what you can do for the company.
  
  
• Instead of writing a statement like, "A position where I can use my skills and grow, etc.", be more specific about the job itself. Instead, write something like, "A position as an administrative assistant in a professional office environment." When you write your objective, focus on the company and the position. Keep this in mind: What would the manager want in a new employee?
  
  
• One title per resume! Don't write a laundry list of all the things you're willing to do. The resume objective is a place to answer a very specific question: "What kind of job do you want?"
  
  
• Keep it short. The objective should be no more than one sentence. You may use two sentences as long as both are short and get straight to the point. However, a long objective will not be getting a lot of attention.
  

Skills & Capabilities all Great Companies Look For

• Leadership – You direct, motivate and even inspire others to do things they could not or would not do without your influence. You set the vision for your organization and then enroll and enable to team to deliver on it. This is the single most valuable capability. If you are not a 'born leader' take time to study it and get better at it.
  
  
• Strategic Thinking – You understand the overall objectives/goals of your company, division, etc. and are able to develop choices for what your team will focus on to deliver against them. You then develop specific tactics to bring the strategies to life. You think in terms of fiscal years vs. day to day.
  
  
• Innovative Thinking – You are able to think “outside the box” and create concepts and products that go beyond the obvious. You make relevant connections between situations you or the team have encountered before.
  
  
• Creative Problem Solving – You are able to properly identify problems and then organize yourself and the team to develop solutions and put them into action.
  
  
• Collaboration/Team Work – You understand what an effective team is and bring people together to deliver great results. You understand diversity and leverage it in your day to day affairs. You treat others with respect.
  
  
• Communication – You are an effective written and oral communicator. You are open and honest and give and receive feedback frequently and effectively.
  
  
• Flexibility – You are able to accept change, adapt to new conditions and surroundings. You view change as an opportunity to learn and grow vs. a distraction to be avoided.
  
  
• Mastery – You understand the technical aspects of your work, the processes and data used. You are able to learn new information and technologies and quickly adapt them to your work. You constantly seek to improve your level of mastery.
  
  
• Reliability – You get work done in a quality way every time. You show up on time, participate actively, are responsive to requests and follow through on your commitments.
  

Top 8 most important elements of a great resume:

1. It must be concise, easy to read, eye catching. If this is not the case, it WILL NOT be read.
   
   
2. The average scan time for a resume is less than 30 seconds. Write and rewrite it, sharing it with others for feedback until you are sure this is the case.
   
   
3. It should clearly state your career objective up front which must match the job you are interviewing for. For example, "To work as a market research manager for a major apparel company", or "to work as a manufacturing operations manager for a major automobile company".
   
   
4. It should focus most of the page on your relevant skills and experience and link those to what the company is looking for. Be specific on the skills and capabilities you have acquired and the accomplishments you've delivered. With each example, state the experience, what you gained from it and what you accomplished. Accomplishments are business and organizational results such as: sales goals, team development, accounts secured, products launched, etc. Think in terms of money you made for the company.
   
   
5. Civic leadership roles/positions should only be included if they specifically support the career objective.
   
   
6. Job experiences and education are secondary to skills and capabilities. List the chronology last.
   
   
7. Personal interests are only relevant if they present skills or capabilities that support the career interest.
   
   
8. References should be listed as "on request". Have some ready if requested!

Resume Mistakes

There are a number of common mistakes that people make when writing their resumes. Each of these mistakes can really undermine you, no matter how much good work you have put into writing and formatting.

Here are the most common mistakes and how to fix them:

1. Using Tiny Fonts: People tend to change jobs much more frequently nowadays than they did in the past. Consequently it can be a struggle to squeeze in all your previous work experience in one or two pages, and as a result, many people are tempted to use a tiny font. This is not a good idea; you should never use a font size smaller than 10 points. Instead, you should aim to edit your resume to make it more concise. Additionally, it's okay to omit information which is not relevant to your potential employer—for example, if you're aged 50 and applying for a senior management position, it isn't necessary to include the part-time summer job you had in high school in your previous employment!
   
   
2. Too Much Text: When writing your resume, especially the previous experience section, you want to avoid using long wordy paragraphs. You want to be concise and focus on conveying the key points. Use action words like "managed", "developed", "created". Write simply, and even consider using bullet points instead of paragraphs of text.
   
   
3. Inaccurate Proper Names: Double check that all proper names (especially school and company names) are correct, and spelled correctly. Do not use variations or abbreviations of the names, no matter how widely understood that you think that they are—use the actual name.
   
   
4. Typos, etc.: They look careless and they are careless. Typos, spelling and grammar mistakes will simply convince potential employers that you are poor at paying attention to detail. Use the spell checker in your word-processing software, but be aware this will not catch everything, so ask friends and family to double and triple check your resume too.
   
   
5. Personal Web Sites: Many people include a link to a personal web site in their resume. This is mistake unless your web site is entirely focused on material related to your career. Non-work related information on your web site may come across as frivolous, time-wasting, irrelevant or inappropriate. If your web site includes jokes, photographs, stories, blogs, information about friends or social events, do not include a link to it in your resume. If you really want to include a link to a web site in your resume, then set up a web site just about your professional career, and link to that.
   

Guidelines for References

1. References should include your current supervisor. If for some reason you do not want to do that, you need to tell why (such as your application being confidential). If you don’t explain, you will leave a big question mark in your readers’ minds, and they’ll fill it with the worst-case scenario.
    
   
2. If possible, it is helpful to include someone other than your supervisor who is at the level of the position you are seeking. This provides another perspective on your ability to do the job at that level.
    
   
3. Always contact each of your references, first for permission to use them, and thereafter, to let them know about each application in which you are including them. You don’t want them to be surprised when they get a call.
    

Quick Resume Checklist

• Is the resume printed on conservative paper that will photocopy cleanly?
  
• Does the word “resume” appear at the top of the page? (It shouldn’t.)
  
• Do the section headings stand out?
  
• Is your name the largest item on the page?
  
• Are you using space wisely? (Margins not too large, items not spaced too far apart)
  
• Are your indentations even? (Use your tab key instead of space bar to make indentations even.)
  
• Are there any spelling errors or typos? (Unacceptable.)
  
• Is there consistency throughout on the use of headings and fonts?
  
• Are pronouns eliminated? (They make your descriptions more wordy then necessary)
  
• Does the word “I” appear? (It shouldn’t.)
  
• Are vague words such as “various” and “numerous” eliminated?
  
• Do descriptions begin with a variety of action words? (Avoid repetition.)
  
• If there is a second page, is your name and “Page Two” in the upper corner?

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