I. Foundation Building
A. Employer vs. Applicant The most important person in the job hunting equation is not the applicant...it is instead the person reviewing your resume...the employer-to-be. The job search is not about you (applicant) finding a job and making money...the process is about you (applicant) demonstrating to them (employer) that you can fulfill a need that they perhaps don't even know they need met. It’s not "what can brown do for you", but vice-versa. The goal is to think of everything from their perspective...from this frame-of-reference, we can instantly know that:
As a piece of paper, you mean absolutely nothing to them and they will throw you out at the slightest mistake. Perfection is necessary, and perfection is earned by mastering 2 things: consistency and specificity. E.g., be consistent in your labeling of states (if you use ‘CA’, so help me you better avoid spelling out ‘California’ anywhere on the page), be consistent in your documentation of timeframes (like sizes of hyphens between dates; switching between ‘Current’ and ‘Present’ [i.e., ‘June 2006 - Present’ vs ‘June 2007 – Current’ is wrong on two counts), etc. Be specific through your use of details, explained below. You need a perfect document.
They are busy people who have a million things to do (in addition to the million resumes they are reviewing), so your resume needs to be presentable in 30 seconds or less; however--in practical terms--you have 5 to 7 seconds to make an impression. This means your resume 99.9% of the time will be limited to one page (CVs not included). CVs are for primarily academic- and research-related positions, FYI. They place an emphasis on written works, conferences, subject matter, etc. Resumes place an emphasis on quick fact dissemination. How to get it to one page? 1.) Move default margins out to .5”-.75” on every side; 2.) don’t stack contact information beneath your name [move it to the left and right margins, see templates below], 3.) utilize the white space beneath your headings; and 4.) leave information off of the page. This leads to:
B. Helpful Analogies
*Think of your resume as a 30-second movie trailer. Remember a movie that you really wanted to see at midnight on opening night (e.g., The Dark Knight.) You may not be the type to dress up as The Joker or Batman--heck, that might annoy you--but you love Nolan's take so much that you're willing to be there with all of the other mega-fans (who have also dropped nearly $30 for tickets and crappy refreshments). Now, what if the movie trailer had been more than just Heath's voice over a hazy blue bat signal? What if the trailer had given away the secrets or ending to the film? The short answer is you wouldn't have to waste your hard-earned money or time to see the movie at midnight...you could wait a few days or weeks. The same can be said about a resume: if you try to tell them too much, they won't have as much need (or desire) to see you in the interview. Tease them: the purpose of the resume is not to get you the job; rather, it is designed to get you the interview! This means you can leave redundant and less-than-relevant information off of the resume and save it for the interview. They'll swear you "leap off of the page" (which is the whole idea).
This also means that you will never have a generalized, catch-all resume. Each resume will be designed according to the specific employer's needs. For instance--to stick with the movie analogy--let's assume you're a marketing executive charged with making a 30-second trailer for your newest 3-hour epic film, Titanic. You have 2 audiences: young men and young women. Your 30-second trailer for young women will be perhaps nothing but shots of Leo DiCaprio. Your trailer for young men will be 30 seconds of Kate Winslet, gunfights, the ship sinking, et cetera. Same 3-hour movie, completely different trailers for your audiences. The same applies to resumes: Employer 1 might need to know A about you; Employer 2 might need to know B about you. Know who you're writing the document for! *Your resume can also be visualized as a book. The title of a book is on the cover and is generally the largest text there is. Your name is the title of the resume; likewise, it needs to be big, bold, and caps-locked (16-18 point font works wonders). You find a book in the library by the ISBN number; likewise, we need full contact information for you beneath your name. Postal address to the left (or PO Box if you're nervous about putting private home address out there), phone/ email to the right. This saves space and groups relevant information together.
*When you open up any book, you'll find the Table of Contents which lists the name of each chapter. Likewise, each section heading of your resume could be considered a chapter name. What if we open your book—Herp Derp's Resume—and see a chapter entitled "Murder"? We would expect to read about homicide in some fashion in that chapter. If we don't, the reader then feels misled, lied to, pissed off, etc. Make sure the section headings reflect what is actually in each section. Prime example: -Section heading named “Work History”= VERY BAD. For starters, you’re not telling me every job you’ve ever had in your life, so we know you’re not telling me your entire history and this heading is a lie. I will either throw out your resume right away (in 5 to 7 seconds), or I will look at the HISTORY part—timeframes of employment—which leads to one of the biggest problems people have with resumes: “Unexplained Gaps in Employment”. Frankly, this is irrelevant, but by telling me to look at your HISTORY this is the first thing I go to. Instead, let me know right away that this isn’t everything there is to know about you—this is a trailer, remember?!—so call the section what it really is: RELEVANT PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE. Likewise, for skills, don’t just call it the SKILLS or ABILITIES section. I’ve never met you before, and if your heading is this followed by 4 or 5 bullets, I think you have…4 or 5 skills. Follow me? Label these SELECTED PROFESSIONAL CAPABILITIES or HIGHLIGHTED PROGRAMMING PROFICIENCIES, etc.
C. Formatting Notes
*People start reading on a page from the top-left to the bottom-right. Therefore, everything on your page must follow suit: most important information (to them) on the top and left margins, least important on the bottom and right margins. I.e., dates always go on far right margin (Most current on top).
Never use underlines! The only acceptable place for a line is perhaps one that divides your contact info (the cover of your “book”) from the rest of the page. Lines break up reading flow and direct eyes to different parts of the page; they need to read it from top left to bottom right. We will use combinations of bold (for the most important information in each section, which comes first/ at the top); italics (second most important information in each section, which comes second/ below bolded text); and regular style (for everything thereafter).
There are 4 general sections to a good resume: Education, Relevant Professional Experience, “Skills”, and a section about…you (i.e., Selected Honors and Achievements). Each section takes up about a quarter of your page and can be broken down into sub-sections (i.e., “Skills” might be “Selected Computer Capabilities” and “Highlighted Language Proficiencies” or “Relevant Professional Certifications”). Employment might be broken into “Selected Programming Experience” and “Other Professional Experience”. The ordering of sections depends on the employer! I.e., if you want to be a lawyer, the first thing they’ll need to see is your Education (law degree). However, if Mr. Lawyer-to-be wants to work at a Tanning Salon, his Relevant Professional Experience might come first (see templates).
II. CRUCIAL FORMULAS
A. Relevant Professional Experience bullet lists
The most important part of each job on your resume is the bullet list.
I’m going to give you a basic formula for creating stellar bullet lists that anybody with even the most limited of experiences can use. But first, know these things: *Each job will have only 4-5 bullets (for consistency) and each bullet describes a different task. *Each bullet shall be only 1-2 lines of text max and will not be complete sentences; therefore, NO PUNCTUACTION AT THE END.
Each bullet will contain 3 ELEMENTS: 1.) Strong/ Unique Action Verb. (Litmus test: ask yourself if the verb you’re using can be broken into more specific choices; e.g., using this test, verbs like “helped”, “worked”, and “assisted” are all bad choices.) 2.) The name of the task itself. 3.) Specific Details. (This is what I need: Timeframes, i.e. daily/ weekly/ monthly; Numbers, i.e. approximations and ranges; and the 5 W’s and How- What, When, Where, for Whom, and How did you do this task?)
The first step for each job is to write down 4-5 SIMPLE, UNIQUE ONE or TWO WORD TASKS. For instance, if you were a shift manager somewhere, your 4-5 words might be Communication; Administrative Duties; Memos; Research; and Supervision. Take each one of these tasks and plug them into the “3 Elements”. Let’s use Memos as our example.
We need a strong, unique action verb to describe what you did with memos. How about “Worked on” memos? (Litmus test: “Worked” can be broken down into many stronger verbs, one of which might be “Drafted”. Let’s use that instead). Element one—the strong/ unique action verb—is DRAFTED. Element two—the task itself—is MEMOS. So far, we have (bullet) DRAFTED MEMOS. We just need the final element incorporated, which are the details. The first one we need is a timeframe—how often were you drafting memos? Perhaps daily. DRAFTED MEMOS DAILY. Now we need numbers—about how many? DRAFTED APPROX. 7-10 MEMOS DAILY. Now we need the final detail- 5’s + How. DRAFTED APPROX. 7-10 MEMOS FOR 3 SUPERVISORS AND 10 CO-WORKERS VIA MICROSOFT WORD CONCERNING GOALS, OBJECTIVES, AND STRATEGIES DAILY. Sounds pretty good, huh? Super simple once you get the hang of it!
Note: Sometimes your task selection will also be your strongest verb (in other words, elements 1 and 2 will be the same word). For instance, if the task you selected was COMMUNICATION, your strongest verb might simply be COMMUNICATED. So, all we need to do is incorporate element 3—details—and your bullet will be finished. Regardless, it still has all 3 elements…numbers 1 and 2 are shared in the same word. With this formula, any job you’ve ever had becomes relevant to your potential employer!
B. Selected Skills bullet lists
If you adopt the same formula from above for skills (e.g., using a variety of action verbs), you will go nowhere fast. I need to be able to quickly discern what you’re best at, so we use a simpler formula for documenting your skill proficiencies. Think of a grade scale: A, B, C, D, and F. We never advertise our bad grades (D and F), so let’s cut those off completely. That means C is no longer a “bad” grade…it’s simply base-level good. B is “Better”, and A is “Best”. You will assign an A, B, or C to each skill you’d like to list and adopt an appropriate verb structure in conjuction that will also maintain consistency. This looks like:
Strongest verb #2 (i.e., Advanced) < A > Best
Adverb+ verb #1 (i.e., Highly Proficient) < B > Better
Verb #1 (i.e., Proficient) < C > Good
See the templates via imgur for help, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Be specific here—if you tell me you’re an “A” (or Advanced) in Microsoft Office, then you better tell me what programs you’re advanced in. Example: Advanced in Microsoft Office, i.e. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Otherwise, I’ll assume you know every aspect of every program (InfoPath?! Access?!) and that may not be the case. Not good.
C. The “You” section- Highlighted Community Engagement, Selected Honors and Achievements, Etc.
The last section is very easy to organize. We place the honor you’ve received in front of the organization or award name (and dates always go on the far right margin). It would look like HONOR RECEIVED, NAME OF AWARD OR ORGANIZATION MONTH 200#
I.e., it is more important to know that you’re the Recipient of an award than it is to know that the award is “most hot dogs consumed at county fair”. The phrasing would be Recipient, County Fair Ribbon (Date). Or, Volunteer, American Red Cross (Date). Or, Weekly Tutor, C# Computer Language at local university (Date).
That’s it for a resume, or as best can be done through a message board. PM me for any questions relating to resumes, cover letters, salary negotiation tips/ tricks, etc. I’d be more than happy to help. Again, sorry for the super post, but if you made it this far you are in prime shape to build a better resume.
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