Anyone will tell you one of the most important things when searching for a job is to have a great looking resume. It’s the first thing about you that comes into contact with a potential employer; not your friendly face or your great sense of style, but some words printed on a page. This is the ticket into the door and it can make you or break you.
First thing to do is make an outline. Get all your thoughts together before you just start typing away. The three main things to include on your resume are education, experience, and skills. If applicable, you may also want to include your resources and any awards received either while in school or at a previous job.
For education, you need the school name, location, and years attended. Then simply list your degree, major, any honors received, and any clubs or societies you were a member of as long as it’s pertinent. If you’re sending your resume to a law firm, they likely won’t care if you were in the track and field club, but they will care if you were a member of a mock court society.
Experience should consist of any jobs held during your adult life or any internship you held. You need the company name, location, years worked there, and the position you held. Now in your outline jot down your responsibilities there and any accomplishments you achieved there. No one needs to know about the fast food job you held while you were sixteen or the bar you worked at to put yourself through school. There will be some of you out there with no experience what so ever, who just went through college and never worked in between. For you I would suggest beefing up everything else on your resume, perhaps giving a little more detail in the other areas and adding a job objective, where you make a brief statement about your goal in the position in which you are hoping for.
For skills, keep it brief. This doesn’t mean say things such as “I answer the phone well”, or “Pleasant speaking voice.” Think of things that would be applicable to the job at hand, but don’t be super specific. You can keep it a little broad with things like “excellent communicator, experienced researcher, excellent writing and typing skills.”
Awards and resources are optional. Simply list any awards you received and where you received them. This does not mean tell about your bowling league championship; stick to academic awards or anything that showed involvement in the community. Resources should mostly be used for areas where it may be necessary to do work at home or outside the office. You can state in one or two sentences the resources you have available to you such as a home office, high speed internet connection, fax machine, network capability, etc.
Now that you have all your information down, it’s time to put it all together. At the top of the page needs to be your name, your title if applicable (such as attorney at law, physician, etc.), address, telephone number, and e-mail address. Most people like to center this at the top of the page, you may even want to make it slightly larger and place it in bold font. Now you need a line or some sort of separation between that and the rest or your resume. As for the rest of the resume, it comes down to personal preference how it should exactly be laid out. There are resume templates in many word processing programs or you can create your own. There are some general rules, though; keep it to one page, use standard typeface and size, and try to make it as clear, concise, and easy to read as possible. It can be very tempting to list every little thing thinking a longer resume will make you look more experienced, or that using a fancy font will get you noticed. This is not the case. Being able to present everything clearly and neatly will be what makes you stand out.
It’s not very important exactly what order you put your education, experience, and skills in, though it’s recommended to place your resources and awards last, if you are using them. Whether using a template or going freehand, it is standard to list your headings on the left side of the page in bold capital letters and your information to the right of it. Some people choose to use bullets to list their information; some may use simple short paragraphs. Paragraphs are recommended if you have a lot of information; it will help you keep to the recommended one page. You may not be able to list everything that you had on your outline. Now is when you will have to decide what is important and what is not. Many people have their resumes loaded down with unimportant or redundant information. Remember short and sweet is the answer.
Using these simple tips you should be able to create a professional looking resume. Feel free to make a few different ones and then decide which one looks the best or seek someone else’s opinion. A good resume will get you noticed above others and can take you far.
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