These resume writing related tips -- choosing the best resume style, tips for highlighting career accomplishments, and more --
have been gathered from numerous sources throughout Quintessential Careers and organized here for your convenience.
Keywords are nouns and phrases that employers use to search internal
and external resume databases when searching for job candidates.
While this practice started in the technology industry, it has spread
to many other industries, and more and more job-seekers are placing
keyword sections on their resumes (both traditional and scannable) to
strengthen their chances of being selected. (See our article,
Scannable Resume Fundamentals, for more
details.)
The best way to develop a list of keywords for your resume
is to first examine your accomplishments and skills areas. Second,
examine the type of job you are seeking to move into. Third, conduct
some job searches at some of the other major job sites and make a
list of the keywords from the job postings (using, for example, job
title, job description, qualifications, skills, software, industry
jargon, etc.). You might also consider searching the Bureau of Labor
Statistics' Occupational
Outlook Handbook for
keywords.
We've heard from job-seekers who are worried about listing their
unlisted phone numbers on resumes and cover letters. Some are even
concerned that employers have sold phone numbers to telemarketers. We
have a hard time believing that any company would sell this
information to telemarketers, but even if they did, most experts
would agree that when you are job-hunting, you cannot place any
obstacles in your path. If you leave off your phone number, you risk
missing out on some opportunities. If you are concerned about
unwanted phone calls, you may want to get a screening device, such as
an answering machine, voicemail, or Caller ID.
Graduated from college but lack experience? Look at what you have you
been doing recently. Take a hard look at what you did in college.
Part-time jobs and internships are obvious sources valuable work
experience, but also examine your college career. Focus on any kind
of extracurricular activities you may have participated in as well as
the specific assignments and work you completed in your classes.
Perhaps you were a member of one or more groups in college. Did you
hold any offices or perform any duties as a member? As for your
classes, did you complete any large projects and analyses?
Read Quintessential Careers:
Fundamentals of a Good Resume,
along with a related article on
transferable skills. From
these two articles, you should be able to build a fairly strong
resume, even without a lot of "real-world" experience.
Resumes have not changed all that much over the last few years, with
the exception of scannable (or text-based) resumes and the move
toward using keywords or skills summaries in resumes. Make sure your
resume includes strong action verbs to describe your accomplishments
(not your duties). Read up on
transferable skills. More
resume information can be found at
Quintessential Careers: Resume Resources.
It wasn't too long ago that action verbs meant everything in resume
development. Action verbs are still important, but nouns and noun
phrases are the buzz with resume development -- mainly because of the
increased use of scannable (also called text-only) resumes. Because a
growing number of employers are using resume databases -- either
their own or a job site's -- to select candidates to interview, it
becomes increasingly important for the job-seeker to know the most
effective nouns and noun phrases (keywords) that employers will use
to search the databases to pull applicants. Where do you find the
nouns? Look at job descriptions and job profiles for the
requirements. Look at the industry's use of jargon. Look at the
skills that are in demand.
Good sources for more information about
keywords and some keyword examples include Rebecca Smith's
eRésumés &
Resources Web site and the keyword section of
Canada's
Web Access Employment Network. Use this knowledge --
assuming you have the necessary skills and experience -- to enhance
your resume.
Applying to jobs online? When you are looking for a job, make
everything you do easy for the employer. If the employer has to spend
more time on your application than on others, guess what? He or she
won't; he or she will simply move on to the next applicant. Make
cover letters and resumes sent over the Internet as easy as possible
for employers so they'll consider your application. Always send your
cover letter and resume as unformatted text within the email message
as well as formatted as attachments. If you don't provide both
options, you risk not being considered. Why? Because some employers
only want text, while others request formatted attachments. Still
others don't open attachments for fear of viruses or other security
reasons, and some may not be able to open your attachments because of
software incompatibilities. For guidelines to follow on text-based
resumes, read our article,
Scannable Resume Fundamentals.
Is a resume in ASCII format the same thing as a resume in text only?
Yes. "ASCII," "text only," and "scannable resume" all basically mean
the same thing -- a resume that is stripped of all formatting, making
it easier to scan and store in databases. But there is a little more
to it because some fundamental content differences exist between a
regular formatted resume and a scannable resume. To learn all about
these differences, read Quintessential Careers:
Scannable Resume
Fundamentals.
Want three best pieces of advice for someone fresh out of college
starting a resume? First, get a hold of as many resumes of recent
college graduates as you can get your hands on. Looking at these
resumes will help you decide what you want to do with your resume.
Your college's career services office should be able to show you
samples. Second, get some expert advice. Again, you can start with
your college's career services office, which probably has handouts
and books on resumes. Visit some resume Web sites. Quintessential
Careers has a
list of the best resume sites.
Consider buying a book on resumes or borrowing one from the library. A good one for recent grads is
Resumes for
College Students and Recent Graduates (VGM),
but there are plenty of others. Third, remember the purpose of
your resume as you are writing it. A resume is a document that
describes your work experience, your education (and any special
training you have), and your skills. What makes an excellent resume,
however, is marketing. You have to consider yourself a product, with
the employer as the buyer. Why should the employer buy (hire) you?
Your resume is a key marketing tool in your employment search. You
can learn more about resumes -- as well as the keys to a successful
job search -- by reading
The Domino Effect.
Strong verbs, also known as action verbs, are a vital part of a good
resume. For your current position, verbs should be present tense
(negotiate, resolve, conduct, provide, etc.). For all your past
positions, the verbs should be past tense (monitored, researched,
collected, etc.). Another key is that you should list achievements or
outcomes of your positions, rather than simply duties. You "achieved
a $100,000 increase in sales" rather than "managed client relations
and sales." For a good list of action verbs, visit
Quintessential
Careers: Action Verbs.
Just what is a curriculum vitae anyway? A curriculum vitae (Latin for
"the course of one's life") or CVs or vitaes for short, are basically
resumes, used most often by academicians, physicians, and scientists.
They are also often required when applying to graduate or
professional programs, and when applying for international
employment. CVs contain all the basic information that resumes
contain -- name, address, work experience, education, certifications,
awards and honors -- but usually also contain other pertinent
information, such as scholarly activities (such as papers published
in academic journals, presentations and workshops, creative projects,
etc.), professional development, patents, teaching/course
evaluations, service to the profession. Vitaes also do not have the
short (1-2 page) requirement of resumes.
A couple of examples of blue-collar resumes appear at the site, and you
can also go to your local library or bookstore and get the book. For
more general information about resume formats, see our article,
Fundamentals of a Good Resume.
If you have an employment gap on your resume, try a two-pronged
approach -- one for your resume and one for your interviews. On your
resume: consider converting your chronological resume to a functional
format. Functional resumes focus on your accomplishments in key
skills areas; your employment history is summarized at the end of
your resume - and gaps become less apparent. You can read more about
functional resumes in Should You
Consider a Functional Resume? In the interview: It's best to
position this employment gap as time well-spent on improving or
challenging yourself. If you took some educational courses (or even
just read a lot), you should focus on the attainment of new skills
and knowledge; if you volunteered your services, you should focus on
your accomplishments; and if you did some consulting, you should
focus on the gap as a time to spread your wings and try to make it on
your own. As you can tell from these examples, you need to position
the gap as having some redeeming value.
Finally, remember that while
you may be self-conscious about the gap, some interviewers may never
even notice it, so don't volunteer potentially negative information;
wait for the employer to raise the issue before offering an
explanation.
Most corporate career centers give job-seekers explicit instructions
for how they want to receive cover letters and resumes. Some request
that you email the material, some request that you submit it via a
form from the company's Web site, some request that you fax it, and a
very small few ask you to mail it. Some will include the name of the
hiring manager, while others will simply ask you to respond with a
job number. Email cover letters are a bit different from regular
cover letters, though most of the same rules apply. While the 3rd
edition of Dynamic Cover Letters (available in our
Cover
Letters Books Bookstore) provides some good information and
sample email cover letters, we also have an article, titled
Tips for a
Dynamic Email Cover Letter.
If you're looking for a way to spotlight your skills and knowledge on
your resume, consider a very trendy "Summary of Qualifications"
section. (Sometimes also called "Key Skills," "Qualifications,"
"Professional Profile," or "Key Accomplishments.") In this section
you can showcase your knowledge from all your education and work
experiences. You can think of this section as an executive summary of
your entire resume.
A scannable, or text-based resume is designed specifically for
databases. Scannable resumes follow all the rules of regular resumes,
but the design and format are much different, focusing on keywords
and jargon that may be used when an employer searches its resume
database. These searches are done using keywords and phrases that
describe the skills and education required for the position. Thus,
when writing a scannable resume, it is extremely important for you to
use familiar industry terms acronyms (jargon) that describe your
skills and experience.
If you have some sort of negative issue in your job history (such as
getting fired), don't raise it -- ever -- but especially not in your
cover letter or resume. Even in the interview, let the employer bring
it up. Once the issue has been raised, the best answer is always the
truth. Admit that you made a mistake -- and, more importantly, show
how you have learned from that mistake.
If you've received an honorary doctorate, should you list it on your
resume? There are two groups of people who generally have the right
to use "Dr." before their names -- and they have all spent about 20
years or so getting educated. The first are those with an earned
professional degree, such as in medicine (MD), optometry (OD),
osteopathic medicine (DO), pharmacy (Pharm.D), podiatry (PodD, DP,
DPM); divinity/ministry (BD, MDiv), law (LLB, JD), and others. The
second are those with an earned doctoral degree, the highest degree
you can earn for graduate study. The doctoral degree classification
includes such degrees as Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Doctor of
Public Health, Doctor of Nursing Science (D.NSc.), Doctor of
Psychology (Psy.D.), and the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.).
Many universities (and now colleges) grant a degree called an honorary
doctorate to persons they want to honor or recognize (usually a
dignitary, benefactor, or notable alumni). However, neither the
university or the honoree were naive enough to believe the honor
actually conferred a full doctorate, thus most people with honorary
degrees are discouraged from using them in public, though certainly
many do. In the end, of course, it's the job-seeker's decision.
Focusing on job duties is one of the classic job-seeker mistakes.
Don't focus on your duties -- focus on your accomplishments!
Accomplishments are so much more meaningful to prospective employers
than run-of-the-mill litanies of job duties or responsibilities.
Spend some time brainstorming about your skills and accomplishments --
in all your jobs and education -- with an eye toward the type of job
you want next. Eliminate any skills that you no longer want to
perform; otherwise, you will be stuck in another job doing things you
no longer enjoy. Once you have compiled this list of accomplishments
and skills, it's time to work on your resume.
Functional resumes focus on experience and accomplishments in a small
number of skills clusters. If you are changing careers, focus on
showcasing skills clusters that help support your new career
direction. These skills clusters should signal potential employers as
to the types of jobs you feel you are best qualified to hold. Read
this article: Should You
Consider a Functional Resume?.
If you've had one or more short job stints, de-emphasize the job(s)
in your resume by taking advantage of a functional resume format, in
which you stress your key skill sets, placing your employment history
at the end of your resume. You can read more about constructing
functional resumes in this article:
Should You
Consider a Functional Resume?.
In all situations, from your cover letter to the interview, you must
be able to showcase your accomplishments and achievements in your
previous experiences -- and build a platform for showing how you'll be
able to do these same things (and more!) for a new employer. For help
with focusing on your achievements, read:
For Job-Hunting
Success: Track and Leverage Your Accomplishments.
If you are changing careers and believe that a chronological resume
is not having good results, you may want to check out Susan Britton
Whitcomb's Resume Magic: Trade Secrets of a Professional Resume
Writer (available in our Resume
Books Bookstore), which comes highly recommended by many career experts.
The book is a comprehensive (almost 600 pages!) review of all types
of resumes, and as you might guess given its size, spends a good deal
of time on functional resumes. Also check out our article,
Should You
Consider a Functional Resume?, which discusses the merits and
problems with functional resumes.
Resume writer Deb Dib notes that "the best use of the Web from a
jobseeker's point of view will be to research companies for
networking and interview purposes." In the
Q&A interview Dib
did with Quintessential Careers, she observed, "With the
proliferation of company Web sites, it will become increasingly easy
to become acquainted with companies' power structures, corporate
cultures, directions, and challenges. Interviewees who want to
out-compete the competition have only to do their homework and
interview armed with suggested strategies to help meet corporate
challenges."
Increasingly, employers are demanding experience from all
job-seekers, including those "entry-level" positions that college
grads fill. Why the trend? Because these so-called entry-level jobs
are no longer training positions; employers want employees who can
make an impact from day one. What can you do about it? Position
yourself as having the key skills that employers seek in job
candidates. Identify those key skills you gained from your
educational experience as well as from those odd jobs while in
college. And don't put down those odd jobs; while they may not have
been in your field, you still gained valuable business skills and
experience while working them. Read about these transferable skills --
and how college grads especially can take advantage of them -- in our
growing section on
transferable skills at Quintessential Careers. Once you've
identified those transferable skill sets that you have mastered, you
can then go about developing a new resume. Then read our article,
Should You
Consider a Functional Resume?
What if a previous employer has changed its name? Should you use the
new name on your resume or the old one? Both. A very simple protocol
for handling company name changes on your resume is to simply list
the current name of the company, and then, in parentheses and in
smaller type, list the name of the company when you worked there. So,
for example: Bank of America (formerly NationsBank). Make sure you
follow all the other rules of resume-writing. See a quick overview at
Quintessential
Careers: Resumes Do's and Don'ts, or go for a more detailed
review by using Quintessential
Careers: Resume Tutorial.
Be sure you are totally truthful about the accomplishments you list
on your resume. Have you really accomplished all the things you say
you did on your resume? Remember that a resume is a statement of
facts. While you can put a spin on your accomplishments, the bottom
line is that they all must be truthful statements.
Because of the massive downsizing and rightsizing that began in the
1980s and continues today -- and the current dotcom fallout --
employers are less likely to use job-hopping (or what appears as
job-hopping) as a reason not to interview someone. On the other hand,
keep in the back of your mind that the purpose of your resume is to
get you an interview -- and you want to remove as many roadblocks as
possible. Thus, if you've had short stints in your jobs, you may want
to consider a functional resume. Functional resumes focus on your key
skill sets and accomplishments, de-emphasizing your actual employment
history. You can read more in our article,
Should You
Consider a Functional Resume?. Be prepared, however, to explain
the short job stints in your interviews - and how you are now in a
position to settle down and make a long-term commitment to your next
job.
Remember that no matter how good a job you do with your resume, the
question about your last few experiences will likely be asked -- and
you need to be prepared with a good answer. Talk about how there were
circumstances out of your control that have since been resolved --
that you are ready to make a longer-term commitment to your next
employer - to stay for as long as there are challenges to conquer and
results to deliver to help the company's bottom line.
Some designers create a graphic element and use that graphic on their resume, writes
Jennifer Klein in her article for QuintCareers,
Creative Professionals: Does Your Resume Reflect Your Design Skills?.
This graphic could be a small design used in a corner of the resume or on the header; or, it could be a larger graphic
located somewhere on the resume that does not distract the reader from the content. Using a graphical element can be a great
opportunity to showcase your skills, as long as it does not overwhelm the resume. (Note that if you choose to use a graphic
design on your resume you will also want to incorporate this same design in your cover letter, teaser sheet, and portfolio.
This design also needs to look great both on an electronic resume and on a print version, so be sure to print your resume
before sending it out to ensure that the design works.)
There is no shame in hiring a professional resume writer. You hire doctors, lawyers, financial advisers, and tax consultants when
you lack the expertise in those areas, so why should resume-writing be different? Many employers and even more recruiters actually
encourage the idea of professionally written resumes because hiring managers want to obtain your information in a reader-friendly
form that clearly tells how you can benefit the organization. Read more in our article
Why Hire a Professional Resume Writer?
Keywords are nouns and phrases that employers use to search internal
and external resume databases when searching for job candidates.
While this practice started in the technology industry, it has spread
to many other industries, and more and more job-seekers are placing
keyword sections on their resumes (both traditional and scannable) to
strengthen their chances of being selected. (See our article,
