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What Is a Resumé and Why Is It so Important?
A resumé is a one- to two-page document summarizing your career objectives, professional experiences and achievements, and educational background. It provides potential employers with a quick overview of this information in a format that makes it easy to identify key information at a glance and compare it with the qualifications of other prospective employees being considered for the position.
The heading of the resume should contain your name, address and other contact information (e-mail address, home and cell phone numbers, FAX, etc). The body of the resume should be broken into the following sections: career objective, profile/summary, professional experience, achievements, education, and references.
Your career objective should be brief, no more than two sentences. It should give your potential employers an idea of your short and long-term goals for your professional life. A concise profile or a summary should discuss what you bring to table, particularly how your skills and experience best apply to the job you are seeking. The summary should not contain personal information that discloses ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status, age, living situations, or any other personal information that is not directly related to your career.
Your experience listing should include information on one to five jobs you've held, starting with your current or last job, and listing previous positions in reverse chronological order. You may want to omit second jobs (part-time jobs held concurrently with a full-time job), particularly if they were taken solely to help pay the bills. However, if you had a period of underemployment (for instance, you were laid off from your regular job and did minimum-wage work to pay the bills while you were looking for work in your field), think very carefully about omitting those jobs. You do not want to create gaps in your work history which will raise questions in the minds of potential employers.
Each job entry should include the date range of your employment, name of the companies or person(s) you have worked for, and the city and state where the place of employment is located (full address of employment is not necessary). List your title and your main responsibilities, with emphasis on duties that are applicable to the type of work you are seeking. Be sure to describe your duties in active verbs: "supervised," "managed," "produced," etc. Not only are they more concise than verbal phrases, but they also convey the sense of a person who is a go-getter and takes initiative, as opposed to someone who waits to be directed to perform tasks.
The section on your education should include college, graduate and post-graduate work, as well as any courses or professional certifications that are relevant to your career development. Unless you are still in high school or newly graduated from high school, do not include high school attendance. Achievements, volunteer positions, publications and interests should only be listed if they relate directly to your professional work experience or the job to which you are applying. You want a focused resumé, not one cluttered with irrelevant activities which creates a sense of a disorganized personality that may not be able to stay on task.
References should be listed if specifically requested; however, do not include references on resumés for general distribution. You do not want to have your references become annoyed by having to deal with a large number of casual queries from employers who are just checking out possibilities. Although it was formerly recommended to state that references would be available upon request, current best practices have shifted away from such generic statements. If no references are listed, it is simply understood that the job-seeker can produce them on request for serious inquiries.
In the competitive, Internet-driven world of job searches, your resumé represents you to potential employers. It serves as your tool to attract a potential employer's attention, get the interview and get that job. A great resumé will make you stand out from other candidates by showcasing your aptitudes.
Think of your resumé as your sales pitch -- you need to sell yourself in the best possible way. Invest some time and research into developing your resumé. Make sure it is letter-perfect in every single way. A resumé containing errors, even as tiny as a single letter mistyped, will give your potential employer an impression that you lack attention to detail, that you don't take time to double check your work, or that you are a poor communicator.
Additionally, make sure that your resume is formatted to be visually attractive and easy to read, with sufficient white space to make the important information stand out. You do not want to create a solid block of text so tightly packed it is impossible to pick out the highlights. Stick to classic fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman. They have a timeless quality that conveys stability and reliability. Keep the font size and color standard; don't use headline fonts or colors other than black. Be very sparing with bold or italicized text: you may want to use bold for major headings (experience, skills, education, etc.) or italicize such things as the name of a ship or the title of a book where appropriate. However, excessive use of font styles quickly becomes distractive, drawing the reader's attention in all directions instead of focusing upon critical things for emphasis.
Keep your format consistent and make sure that the resumé looks great when viewed online as well as when printed out. Above all, keep your resume to one or two pages -- unless you are producing an academic CV (a very different document from a typical resumé) additional pages create the impression that you either you lack the skills to identify essential information and separate it from the non-essential, or that you are listing unnecessary information to pad out what would otherwise be slender qualifications.
If youíve never written a resumé before, examine reference books and Internet resources or seek assistance from a professional resumé writing service. A well-written resumé can make a difference between being stuck at your current job and getting an interview to land the job of your dreams.
