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Resume Tips

You really know the basics, but since so many folks violate at least a few of these, let's recap what are the basics:

• Make it easy to read - plenty of white space, Arial font or other easy to read font, bullet points, limit use of fancy formatting such as bolding, or italics.
• Two pages maximum. It is the norm and if you ignore, you look as if you cannot separate the important from trivia.
• Most preferred format is reverse chronological with current job shown first.
• Tell more about most recent jobs, less about earlier ones. Dump jobs that are more than 15 years ago or create a simple summary sentence.

Remember: your resume is just the advertisement to pique the interest of your targeted employer, so it must demonstrate clearly what value you offer to them.

How do you demonstrate your value? Show your achievements!

Skip the job descriptions, or long proposal summaries, tell what you actually did. Detail the situation or task, what actions you took, and the results. Quantify what activities, accomplishments, achievements you can. For example:

• Took over failing contract; within 90 days built effective customer relationships, improved critical metrics, closed all overdue items, and led team to successful re-award.
• Researched, wrote, and presented daily intelligence summaries to national command authority to ensure critical current issues were understandable.
• Led strategic redesign of the HR and Payroll department from silo to team based operation. Results: improved customer service to university clients while lowering turnover in HR/Payroll department.

And finally, tailor your resume to the opportunity and organization by doing the following:

• Use the keywords that are current for your field and for the specific job.
• Focus on your experience and achievements that are most relevant.

If your resume is not getting the results you are looking for, it might be time to refresh your resume or alter the key words listed in your achievements to match the positions you are looking for. Remember to check your statistics to see how many times your resume has been viewed.

Good Luck!