When you are out of work and looking for a job, worry and stress are constant reminders of the fact you need to find a job. Sometimes, those feelings, and the reality of bills piled on the table, lead us to press harder, and in some cases become desperate for work. You treat finding a job like a job, but when the leads dry up, you either apply for a job well beneath your skill and pay level, and/or you find other ways you think will help in your search. Suddenly your resume looks like Word puked it’s color palate menu all over, and the format gods went border crazy. The “Blah blahs” invaded the body of the resume, once a svelte collection of concise professional accomplishments has bloated to umpteen pages of ramblings that in some states, you would get arrested for. And in the worst cases, embellishing one’s resume leads to downright lies about experience that could haunt the remainder of your career.
But we’re not going to let that happen!
The Resume
STOP! Put down the charcoal-linen-colored parchment you were going to stick in your printer. In today’s world, you resume has to stand on its own two feet. Call them Merit and Accomplishment. Just the facts ma’am. If it worked for Joe Friday*, it will work for us.
Your resume is your business card; it is your introduction to prospective employers, and certainly should not be your autobiography. It is meant to be representative of who YOU are. Forget the fancy “resume” services out there who will pray on your desperation that you need the world’s greatest resume to get a job. They’ll have you handing over dollar after dollar only to produce something that may look great, and read great, but isn’t you. If a company will deny considering you for employment because your resume wasn’t professionally done, then do you want to work for them anyways?
Your resume shouldn’t be drawn on the back of the kid’s menu/paper place mat at the corner coffee-shop with the waxy green crayons Crazy Grandma Barb at the front counter let you have. But it doesn’t need to come from Saks Fifth Avenue either. Besides, if you still really want help, I know how you can get feedback and help from real professionals – for free! More on that another time…
Building (or updating) your resume is a personal journey that anyone seeking a job really should undertake, as it will help you better understand who you are professionally and what you offer prospective employers. What you find out about yourself in this process is also typically the answer to the “tell me about you” question that starts so many interviews.
So what should the resume look like then?
First, please note that this is geared towards people in technology professions and therefore some of the information may not apply. But read it anyways because most of it will help and because we asked nicely.
There are plenty of templates available on the web and in MS Word (and I presume whatever the Mac folks use), or ask a friend or colleague to see their resume as an example. There are many different formats that work well so find one that you are comfortable with. I highly recommend you do not use templates that are built with spreadsheet-like cells and tables. Many companies, and most of the online job boards, use automated software for uploading your resume to internal systems and some can’t recognize tables and sections. And if someone (a recruiter or headhunter) is going to represent you at a client, they will probably want to move your resume to their letterhead. From experience – that’s not fun to do when it’s full of tables and cells and text boxes.
When printing out your resume, use normal plain white paper. You don’t need fancy paper or colors to get someone’s attention. Maybe back in the day when you had to slather your saliva on a stamp and slap it on an envelope and mailing your profile to a company this worked, but now I look at such resumes and see someone fluffing and trying to draw attention away from their actual skills and experience. Choose one font (Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri all work well) and do not mix and match different fonts in the resume. You can utilize font sizes and styles to subtly distinguish between different sections of your resume if you choose, but this also can be accomplished through the use of bold and underlined lettering.
Any good story has 3 Acts.
Every resume should have essentially 3 sections: Summary, Experience, and Education/etc.
The “Summary” section is a brief description (2-3 sentences) of who you are professionally, followed by a list of your technical skills and abilities. This entire section really should be no more than a half page, maybe ¾ of a page if you really have that many skills. Only list the main skills and not every Tom, Dick and Harry tool or scripting language you have used. We know you know how to use Word and Excel!
Next is your “Professional Experience.” Trust me, no hiring manager or recruiter wants to see 4 long narrative paragraphs about each job and/or project you have worked on. It might very well be interesting reading – who are we kidding? No it’s not. Regardless, no one has the time to read through it in detail. If we wanted to read a novel, we would go to a library. Instead, briefly describe your role and responsibilities and what your employer does/makes/sells/etc. (2-4 sentences). Then bullet-point your specific, and best accomplishments and achievements (I recommend no more than about 5 such items – after all there will be plenty of time later for patting yourself on the back). If you worked with specific technical skills on a project or projects, you can then list that technical environment as well.
Following professional experience, highlight your “Education,” including college and any other programs/courses that would be of specific help in the job you are seeking. No, we don’t need to see Underwater Basket Weaving 101 on the resume. Stick to what is important to your background. Oh yeah, don’t forget to list certifications and other accomplishments outside the realm of your work experience that would be an added benefit to prospective employers.
Lastly, your contact information at the top of your resume is extremely important. DUH! But many people make the mistake of over or under doing it. List your home address (at least city of residence), along with the best number to reach you at (don’t list multiple phone numbers) and one email address. That email address should be something simple that includes your name. If your email address is something like fridaynitepartier@anymail.com, you might want to get a new email address for your job search. Yes it’s ok to list your LinkedIn public profile, but please spare us the Facebook and MySpace and Twitter addresses. We’ll friend you (maybe) if we hire you. Besides, nowadays you could lose your job for pictures on Facebook! . Imagine trying to get one that way.
Lights, Camera…
After you have a draft of your resume, go back and re-read it. Then do it one more time and correct any spelling or grammatical errors. Nothing turns an employer off faster than someone who couldn’t be bothered to spell-check their resume before submitting it. It also tells the employer you are not someone who pays attention to detail.
Once you are satisfied with your resume draft, ask friends or family to review and edit it – you’ll be cross-eyed from looking at it yourself so many times that a fresh set of eyes will notice any grammatical or other errors you and your computer missed.
Now you have your resume! I know, I know – you still hear the ringings of those “resume services” guys and still would like a professional to look at it, right? Then all you need to do is ask your friends and colleagues to recommend a good recruiter or two. In future posts we will talk all about recruiters, but remember they are the professionals who work with resumes every day. Who better to know what does and doesn’t work? Most of the good ones will review your resume and offer you strong constructive feedback, especially if you ask them to. In some cases, recruiters and headhunters will actually offer to rewrite your resume for free! (okay it’s rare, but we’ve done it).
* Det. Joe Friday on Dragnet (played by Jack Webb who also created the show) never actually said these words that have so famously been attributed to him in pop culture. Read more here.
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