The
Essentials of Resume Writing
Your resume is your personal portfolio, a written representative of
your skills and attributes that must communicate effectively to a
potential employer. It should clearly demonstrate your qualifications
and show the employer why and how it will benefit them to hire you.
Creating a resume such as this requires some thought and effort on your
part, but will be easier for you if you keep in mind these essentials
of resume writing.
Use active language. Your resume should be filled with active language
that communicates your enthusiasm and your accomplishments to a
potential employer. When you use words that show strong action on your
part, the employer gains a better understanding of your strengths and
abilities.
For example, you should say, "Generated weekly sales reports" rather
than "Weekly reports were written by me", or "Directed product launch"
rather than "Product launch was under my oversight".
Give results. The most effective resumes include the job seekers
accomplishments as well as the results they achieved. This helps a
potential employer better understand what action was taken, what result
occurred, and what skill or attribute was used. The employer then can
draw inferences about how well the job seeker's skills and attributes
fit with the needs of the job posting.
Here are two examples of resume statements that show both action and
results:
Directed integration planning for merging two engineering departments,
resulting in favorable employee morale and zero missed deadlines during
the transition period.
Coordinated grand opening celebration for 60,000 square foot business
complex, resulting in 95% favorable ratings from tenants and foot
traffic that was 25% higher than anticipated.
Make the screener's job easy. When a potential employer solicits
resumes for a job posting, it is not unusual for the human resources
department to receive up to several hundred resume responses. Someone
has to screen all of those documents, and the screener will literally
not have time to read each one in depth and in detail. Instead, he or
she will scan each resume looking for the key requirements and minimum
qualifications that determine whether the resume is kept for further
review or set aside and immediately removed from contention.
Help your resume be noticed by making the resume screener's job easier.
Emphasize your key qualifications using bold type, italic type, or
bullet points. Use wide margins, generous spacing between sections, a
font style that is easy on the eyes, and a font size that is no smaller
than 11 or 12 points. Avoid trendy paper colors or textures, and
instead opt for a high quality white paper that will make the print
easier to read.
Proofread and eliminate errors. The quickest way to eliminate your
resume from consideration is to send it to the potential employer with
spelling errors and/or grammar errors in the content. Use a good spell
check and grammar check program to catch obvious errors, but do not
depend solely on this software to catch mistakes.
Proofread the document carefully, using the standard proofreading
technique of reading it backwards one word at a time. Ask several
trusted friends or peers to read it, too, because often a person who
has not spent a great deal of time working on a document will catch
errors and problems that you might miss.
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