Resume Help Blog

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It’s hard to write a resume. Most of us are not “born salespeople.” Just mentioning the word “sales” usually sends a shiver of fear up our spines. Add to this the fact that we are taught from childhood that it’s not polite to brag about ourselves it’s no wonder that when you’re asked to “sell yourself” on a resume you freeze up like a deer in the headlights.

So instead of panicking let’s take a resume apart piece by piece and explain how to write an effective resume. Hopefully this will eliminate some of the fear involved in “selling yourself” on paper.

RESUME BASICS (what every resume MUST have)

Your name, address and phone number (obviously). But also your email address.

Email addresses are where most people tend to go wrong. I have a friend with an email address called “1hottiger” (one hot tiger). While this might be cute among friends, to a prospective employer it shows poor taste, and a lack of maturity (since she’s in her late 40′s). If you don’t have a professional sounding email, create a new one just for your job search. You can get free email addresses on Google, Yahoo or Hotmail.

Example of a BAD email address:

ImAPartyGirl@email.com
JennysMom@email.com
2Hot2Handle@email.com

Example of a GOOD email address:

MaryMartin@email.com
M.Martin@email.com
Mary.A.Martin@email.com

STYLE

When you write a resume avoid using fancy fonts or colored ink. This just makes you look immature. Plus, statistics show that if someone has to struggle to read something they won’t. Which means you’re resume is guaranteed to hit the trash faster than most if you use a script font.

Try to make your resume look like a nice letterhead. One thing I do when I write a resume is condense lines by putting my address all on one line and my phone number all the way to the right. Then I separate it all with a nice line to look like professional stationery.

Leslie K Phone:                                                 (888) 555-0123
123 My Street • Anytown, USA 11223              Email: LeslieK@email.com
__________________________________________________________________

(hint: If you’ve ever wondered how people put in those dots and long dashes, it’s a simple code. Just hold the ALT key and type a specific number on the number pad (number pad, NOT numbers above the letters)

ALT + 0149 for a dot (•)
ALT + 0150 makes a dash (-)
ALT + 0151 makes a long dash (—)

When To Use An Objective Over A Summary

The Objective Statement

An objective statement is for people who are either just starting out or changing careers. Your resume should state your desired job and field (engineering for instance) and demonstrate that you have the skills or education (if not the job background) for the position.

When you write your resume make sure that you use “action words” in your objective statement. Just like they sound they convey that you are a person willing to get to work and do your best. It should state your skills, your desires and what you want to do FOR the employer.

The WRONG Way To State An Objective:

Looking for a position with a dynamic company that will recognize and use my talents. I am seeking a company that promotes from within and will recognize and reward hard work and talent.

This statement is all about YOU. It gives the prospective employer no information about yourself that makes you stand out from the crowd. When you write your resume try to think from their position. They want someone that’s gonna get in there and work hard to make THEM money. How will you do that?

The RIGHT Way to State An Objective:

To apply my knowledge acquired through my Masters degree in Graphic Design and internship at ABC Advertising Company to an entry level position in the art and marketing department of a major magazine.

The Summary Statement

A Summary statement is for people that have been working for a while. It “sums up” your skills and positions using strong “action words” and states your qualifications up-front. It’s a way for a prospective employer to “glance” at your resume and determine if it’s worth reading further. It should outline briefly your skills and background and anything you feel you did that was “above and beyond” the nature of the job you held.

BAD Summary

Department manager for 15 member department in large marketing firm. Managed schedules and oversaw daily department duties and workflow.

The reason this is BAD is that it’s generic. Lots of people have jobs like that. What set you apart? Let’s try again:

GOOD Summary

Accomplished department manager with 10 years experience. Created highly synergistic department of 15 creative marketing employees that generated over $5 million dollars in annual sales through applying teamwork and incentives/rewards.

This is just a sample but you should have 3 to 5 strong sentences like this. When you write a resume show the results your efforts made whenever possible, whether it was saving the company money and/or time, or bringing in sales.

Fact #1: Most resume’s are boring. The average resume reads like an outline for a term paper. A,B,C, 1,2,3. BORING.

Fact #2: Most of us are not born writers and writing about ourselves is extremely hard.

So how do you outline all your great skills and assets in an interesting (if not exciting and dynamic) way?  In this article we’ll give you a resume sample to get you started. Let’s begin with the basics and perhaps if you discover the “hidden writer” within you might work up to exciting and dynamic.

In How To Write A Resume – Lesson #1: Objective Vs. Summary I explained how to layout your name/address, etc. and gave a resume sample of an objective statement vs. a summary statement. Here’s how to write about your experience, skills and education.

Professional Experience

The experience section is where you really get to shine. This is where you break out what you did for your last employer(s) and tell that prospective new employer exactly what an awesome employee you’re going to be.

This is also where most people fall really flat. By just outlining job duties in a paragraph (typed letters, managed inventory, made coffee, ran errands, shot myself in the head from boredom . . . ) you are virtually guaranteeing that your resume will be put in the “round file.”

Before you begin grab a pen and paper and do some real, deep down, thinking about your last job. Were you given goals to achieve? Did you exceed them? Did you do anything above and beyond? Where and how did you “stand out?” Did your prior job contain elements that the new employer is looking for? For instance, if you did the payroll for your last employer is the new employer looking for someone experienced in payroll?

Resume Sample Of A BAD Experience Section

• General bookkeeper for small construction company.
• Managed day to day activities and schedules.
• Reconciled books and did payroll. Paid quarterly taxes.
• Kept track of inventory and supplies.
• Paid bills.

Why is this bad? Because while you MAY have done all those things, you don’t tell the employer how you stood out from the crowd! Lots of people have the skills outlined above. What can you bring to the job that someone else might not?

Resume Sample Of A GOOD Experience Section

• Maintained all accounting and bookkeeping records for multiple construction sites.
• Implemented new cost accounting and inventory control that saved the company $1 million dollars on one single construction site alone.
• Generated payroll for over 100 employees in 5 states.
• Maintained accurate books and paid quarterly taxes – that used to be done by professional CPA firm.
• Created new cost-accounting system that tracked all costs associated with construction site and saved company over $100,000 by eliminating duplicate reimbursements to construction sites.

Use action words and positive phrases. In the sample resume piece above “Saved, Implemented and Created” are a few action words an employer might look twice at.

At this point you’re probably saying, “but I didn’t do anything special at my job.” Well, yes – you did (unless you’re a slug, then I highly suggest you start thinking about how you might perform above and beyond at your next position). Most people get “writers block” when it comes to bragging about themselves. Don’t be nervous. Take a breath and start thinking.

• Were you hired for one job and before long you were given 10 others too?
  • Why did they give you those extra jobs?
  • Were you were more efficient than your co-workers?
• Did you create a special tracking spreadsheet? Because you were more organized?
• Did you train any other employees? Even just through mentoring?

• Did you reorganize something or streamline it in some way?
  • For instance, A long, long time ago I reorganized an entire filing system and created a color-coded key for it. This saved people a lot of work trying to find the right files. You bet I mentioned that on my resume for future executive assistant positions!

NOBODY just sits like a lump and does only what they are initially hired for. We always take on extra jobs. Problem is that after a while we are so comfortable doing them we forgot that we weren’t originally HIRED to do those.

So, think hard about what you started out doing and what was added to your position and think about how you can “brag” about it.

SKILLS

Skills can be broken out in two ways. You can use them to brag about yourself more by stating things you’ve achieved. For instance:

Successfully managed 15 accounting employees processing over $1 million dollars a day in billing.

Or you can actually list your skills:

MS Office • QuickBooks • Photoshop • ABC Accounting Program

And then list your certificates:

• HR1 Certificate
• Certified bookkeeper through the ABC College of Accounting

Education should be kept simple:

• If you have a college degree then don’t list your high school. That’s implied.
• Spell out the name of your college. With the hundreds of colleges out there it’s impossible for everyone to know their initials. Plus it just looks more professional.
• DO NOT exaggerate or lie about your education. Most companies hire professional background checking companies and you WILL be found out.
• You do not need to put the year you graduated down (this gives them a hint at your age) but you may have to list it on the background check information if you’re hired.
• DO NOT list your GPA – unless you’re fresh out of college and the job you’re applying for is in the field you studied.
• DO NOT list college clubs or activities unless they apply to the job or show some sort of leadership ability (for instance being on the student government or donating your time to, or founding a charity)
• Be careful to not list any political activities you might have been involved in. You never know the politics of the person you’ll be interviewing with so don’t give them an opportunity to exclude you before interviewing you.

So that’s it in a nutshell! I hope these resume samples have helped. Now sit down with a pad and paper and put your thinking cap on! You know you were a stellar employee, now all you have to do is make your resume show it!

Here’s a flash! If you have not looked for a job in the last few years, you probably don’t know how to write a resume. So let’s walk through the steps. It could mean the difference between being called in for an interview or being passed over for a better prepared job candidate.

Everyone knows times have changed. But did you know that nowhere is this more relevant than in today’s successful job search strategy?

If you are thinking that all you have to do is create a pleasant, well-formatted “pretty” resume, put a stamp on the envelope, and mail it out you had better read on.

The Three Resume Formats

There are not one, but three, essential resume formats you need to be familiar with. All three are  used in any successful modern-day job search. Here they are:

The Presentation Resume

The Presentation format is probably the one you are most used to. It is the standard format traditionally used for mailing or faxing, or presenting directly to an interviewer. However, since  these are not the only ways your resume will be distributed, you need to know the other formats as well.

The Keyword Scanable Resume

The scanable format is a relatively new invention. In today’s high-tech corporate climate, the bigger companies will often scan resumes into a database for future retrieval. Occasional you will find a smaller company that does also, but primarily it’s the major companies. For this format your resume will need to be stripped of some of its fancy fonts or decorative things like lines or any decorative things. These have no place in a resume anyway. A simple format like Arial or Tahoma works best. It is essential to make sure none of the letters or other elements touches each other, that’s why we recommend either of these two fonts (Verdana works well also) since this can confuse optical scanning software.

Just as if you were optimizing a website, this resume format is also optimized with a specific list of keywords, separated by commas or periods. Use the most commonly nouns that indicate your experience such as your job title (e.g. Systems Analyst or Account Executive), software you are familiar with: (Microsoft Excel, or other software.), or Education (Masters of Business Administration, BS in Engineering). You would place this keyword summary just before the Professional Experience section.

The ASCII Resume

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) resumes are the third type of resume. This type of resume is essential to any modern-day job search, especially if you are emailing your resume to a prospective employer. It also can be used for posting your resume to an online job-bank site such as Monster.com. Like the Keyword Scannable Resume, it should ideally include a Keyword Summary. One major difference that is unlike the Keyword Scannable format, this one uses a proportional font (generally Courier or Courier New)

Unless the employer already knows and trusts you, you are going to have to send it this new way. The old ways are long gone.

If you follow these directions you will find your job hunting a little easier

This means you are going to basically strip your beautiful resume of all its attractive “bells and whistles.”

Sound simple? It really is, once you have done it. Remember, things are changing and the only way to succeed is to change with them

Good luck!

Be sure to repeat this process for your cover letter. When cutting and pasting the cover letter to an email document, just place the cover letter before the resume with some kind of separation indication, such as, you guessed it, COVER LETTER. After the cover letter is finished, cut and paste the resume with the indication- you guessed it again- RESUME. Difficult, right? Now just simply zip it away to the employer of your choice, and you’re done!