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A resume
is supposed to be a brief summary of your abilities,
education, experience, and skills. Its main job is
to market yourself to an employer and get them to
contact you and hopefully get an interview. In this
guide we will give you some pointers on writing an
effective resume.
Before
You Begin
Before you begin writing your resume you should do a
rough draft on paper, a sort of self assessment if
you will. Outline your skills, abilities, education,
and experience on this paper and go over it several
times. This will make it easier for you do come up
with a final draft on the computer.
Resume Content
1. Contact Information
The first thing you should include on your resume is
your contact information, your name, address,
telephone number, email address, and fax number
should all be included in this section. It is
important to use current and permanent information
here, if this information is wrong your hopeful
employers will have no way of contacting you. If you
don’t have a permanent address or phone number use
your parents or a friend’s.
2. Objective or Summary
This section is typically located under your contact
information and before everything else. This section
tells your prospective employers what you plan on
doing for their company and what you hope to get
from them. It is very important to include what you
plan on doing for their company as well; leaving
this out of your objective is a very common mistake
people make with their resumes. It is also very
important to tailor each objective to the specific
job you are applying for.
The third thing that should be listed on your resume
depends on your educational and work history. If you
have just recently graduated then you probably don’t
have very much related work experience. If this is
the case then you would list your education in your
resumes third section. If you have a lot of related
work experience or very little education then you
should list your work experience in the third
portion of your resume.
3. Education
In this section you are basically telling your
potential employers about your educational
background. Include your degrees (B.A., B.S., ect.),
major, intuition attended, and your minors and/or
concentration. You should list your grade point
average if it is above 3.0 and should also mention
any academic honors. Don’t forget to list your
academic information starting with your most recent.
4. Work Experience
In this section you should describe your previous
work experience and what you have gained through
your work experiences. It is very important to use
action words (see chart below) to describe what you
have done for that company through your duties.
Include the title of your position, the name of the
company, location, dates of employment, and specific
skills used and learned from that particular work
experience. Start with your current or last job and
work backwards.
5. Other Information
Including this section is optional and is dependant
on your previous experiences. Here you can list any
accomplishments, skills, or abilities you have
learned, courses you have taken (first aid, cpr, ect.),
awards you have won, or any volunteer work you have
done.
6. References
It is important to list several references for your
potential employers to contact, anywhere’s from
three to five references will be sufficient. If you
can have at least three business references, and no
more then two personal. Make sure you ask your
references if it is fine with them and if they will
give you a positive reference before listing them on
your resume. If you do not have any references add
"References furnished on request” to this section.
Checking Your Resume
Before you submit your resume to any potential
employers there are several things you should do to
make sure it doesn’t contain any mistakes. Run your
resume through a spell check program to see if there
are any grammatical errors. Give your resume to
several friends and family members and ask for their
opinion on it and see if they can find any
grammatical oversights.
Resume Design
Many people have great resumes content wise but ruin
it in the design process. A resume should look very
professional and doesn’t need to be visually
stimulating. You should stick to a plain white or an
off white 8.5” X 11” paper, use a non-decorative
font, only use one typeface, avoid italicizing or
underlining words, and don’t include any images,
shading, or vertical lines. Out of courtesy you
should staple or fold your resume, if you have to
mail it then use a large envelope.
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