I spent the early part of my career supporting the recruiting team for an IT Consulting company in New York City. Back in those days, we called it DP for Data Processing and we did not have PCs on our desks. As we constructed someone’s resume to present to a client or to include in a proposal, we would agonize over every sentence, indeed every word and proof and re-proof to make sure that the resume was as error free and powerful as possible. Back then, your resume was a sacred document that you printed on thick stock and protected from the environment in plastic folders safely ensconced in your briefcase. Those were the days.
Yesterday, I reviewed the resume of a Quality Assurance person with a typo on the third line. The irony was too much and I tossed the resume. Hasty? Perhaps.
Recently I challenged a candidate I was interviewing about a skill they had highlighted in the summary of their resume as having “extensive experience with.” When I could see no evidence of the skill in the body of the resume I asked where the candidate had worked with it. He said “Actually, I haven’t worked with it but I understand how it works.” I countered that I understand how a diesel engine works, but that I do not list diesel mechanic on my resume and showed him the door. He was shocked that I was upset about this misrepresentation of his skills.
These days, you do not hand your well crafted resume to someone or mail it to them with a cover letter. These days you blast it out to uncharted regions of the internet or post it for the world to see. The trouble is the recipient of your resume is just as demanding about the quality of your resume today as we were back in 1985 and most applicants are not.
Your objective as a resume writer is to capture the reader’s attention within 15 seconds and keep them engaged with a well written, truthful resume. With that in mind, here are nine tips on how to construct your resume.
- Build your resume in reverse chronological order with your most recent position first. Do not create a functional resume that consolidates your experiences into blocks of talent like Management and Operations. These are too hard to follow.
- Do not repeat yourself. If you are doing the same thing today that you did at your last job, point out the difference in industry, business cycle or whatever is different. If you are too bored to re-write the experience, guess who is too disinterested to keep reading?
- Include the month and year that you start and leave jobs. We are going to ask and if there are breaks we will find them. If you are vague, it makes us suspicious.
- You should have a career summary at the top of your resume that grabs the reader. If your summary is more then a quarter of a page, it is not a summary.
- No one reads a nine page resume so no one should write one. Looking at a nine page software developer’s resume always makes me wonder how efficient their code is.
- Don’t change font size and fonts too much. It is a resume not an eye test.
- Make sure someone proofs your resume for you. Preferably someone for whom English is their primary language.
- Do not lie on your resume. I know this is obvious but the number of people who are fudging information on their resume seems to be reaching epidemic proportions.
- Always control where your resume goes. It is your intellectual property and should be protected.
Happy hunting!
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Your thoughts, in general, are dead on, but if you’re concerned about typos, you really ought to check your own work. There are a number of punctuation and grammatical errors in your piece. See #7.
Touche! I even had someone proof it for me. Thanks and I will leave the error there as an example of how not to do it.
I extremely enjoyed this! I would have to say this is an extremely informative post that should get mentioning elsewhere. This is for 2 types of people:current writers who are considering a change in job,and people trying to decide to become a writer.