How to Write a Resume

If you have a reasonable grasp of the English language, you can learn how to write a resume that wins interviews.

When a hiring manager reads your resume and knows instantly that you‘re worth her time to interview your resume has done its job.

Knowing how to write a resume that makes the cut is vital. In fact, well written resumes are so rare that having a strong one will give you a definite employment edge.

Approaching your candidacy from the hiring authority’s perspective is key to getting you that interview. Everything you include on your resume should be done with the potential hiring authority in mind.

Your Resume's Content

Your Resume Target

Resume Keywords

Your Resume Format

Your Personal Contact Information

Resume Objective or Career Statement

Your Work History and Accomplishments

Your Skills and Professional Qualifications

Your Education and Training

Other Considerations

• You must be able to speak in detail about everything included on your resume. Including falsehoods and misrepresentations will make you vulnerable in the interview.

  If, during the interview, you're unable to support even one thing on your resume; your credibility will suffer. At that point your chances of getting the position will be next to zero.

• Begin your statements about position responsibilities with action verbs in the past tense for past jobs and current tense for existing positions. Examples of past tense action verbs include: Achieved, completed, created, developed, directed, planned, prepared etc.

• The overall visual impact of your resume is important. Use only one business like font type. You can emphasis important information by varying font size as well as by using bold and italicized words.

• Use bullet points and plenty of white space to help the human scanners. Using bullet points will also relieve you of having to use personal pronouns such as I and my. By eliminating personal pronouns you will be able to illustrate your accomplishments without sounding egotistical.

• Above all else proof-read and spell check your resume extensively.

What Not to Include

That means you get to decide what to leave out as well as what to put in. If you are a mature job seeker with years and years of experience you may decide to leave out lower level jobs you had early in your career that have no relevance to the position you’re after today.

Other things that should be left out include:

• Salary information
  This will probably be asked for on an employment application but should not be included on your resume.

• Employment or Personal References
  References will generally not be checked until after an interview. Some placement professionals will ask for references before presenting you to their client(s). You will be asked for them when the time is right.

• Marital status
  This information should not be relevant.

• Religious affiliation
  This along with marital status is an area about which it is illegal to ask questions in a job interview unless there is direct relevance to the applicant’s ability to perform the work.

• Any other information that may cause a bias against your candidacy
  

For more free tips and advice on how to gain an employment edge go here.