Quintessential Careers Press:
The Quintessential Guide to Job-Hunting on the Internet
Chapter 7: Preparing and Polishing Your Resume
Page 27
Resumes on the Internet are ubiquitous . . . but before you can put yours out
over the Net, you need to know something about resume preparation.
Here are the keys to successfully preparing and writing a resume. Follow these simple rules and you should achieve success in this important phase of job-hunting.
Do consider a bulleted style to make your resume as reader-friendly as possible.
Don't get overwrought about the old “one-page resume rule.” It’s good to
keep your resume to one page, if possible, but if you have a lot of experience, two
pages may be more appropriate. If your resume spills beyond one page, but you
have less than a half a page of material for the second page, it may be best to condense to one page.
But don't go beyond two pages with your resume.
Do consider a resume design that doesn’t look like everyone else’s.
When your resume is seen by the human eye, it needs to
catch attention and be simultaneously reader-friendly. In the study
by Career Masters Institute mentioned above employers ranked easy
readability as the most important resume point in terms of first
impressions.
Avoid instantly recognizable Microsoft Word resume templates.
Employers have seen a million of them, so they don't stand out. They
are also somewhat inflexible and contain some problematic formatting.
"Using a template or any kind of boilerplate to demonstrate your
value to a company is the worst thing you can do to yourself when job
hunting," says Nick Corcodilos of Ask The Headhunter. "You're
supposed to be uniquely qualified so the company will choose you
instead of some cookie-cutter drone -- right? Do you really want a
template?"
Ensure that the appearance of your resume holds up when you transmit
it electronically. If you are regularly sending your resume as an
e-mail attachment, you may want to experiment with sending it to
friends' computers to ensure that the formatting appears consistently
from computer to computer.
Display your name boldly and in a large font at the top of your
resume to project confidence; a small name makes the job-seeker look
timid.
We recommend a resume body font no smaller than 10.5 points and no
larger than 12 points. Type at 11 points is often the best choice for
resumes. Don't use justified text blocks; they put odd little spaces
between words. Instead, make your type flush left. Employ some
typographic variety -- judicious use of bold and italics. You can use
up to two different fonts on your resume, and make sure they are
readable. Avoid underlining because it adds clutter to your resume.
Include pleasing white space on your resume, but don't go overboard.
The default margin setting in Microsoft Word is 1.25", but you'll
have an easier time fitting everything in if you set your margins at
.75" to 1".
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