Resume Tips!
 

Please post some Resume Tips you have learned . . . as well as cool sites or books that may give some inspiration . . . :D

I don't know if this would work for everyone, but I have a friend who loves working on other people's (his friends' & family) resumes. So occassionally we'll rotate with a couple of friends, and get feedback from all of them.

It helps with the "little" stuff, like "This looks to cluttered" or "I wouldn't want to read this, there's too much"... that kind of thing. After 2 or 3 people have read it, it can look completely different.

The campus career center has people that will read your resumes and give tips. also, teachers that teach in your field might know what and what not to put on a field/non field related resume.

My best resume advice:

First, buy a book called Resumes That Knock Em Dead. It really taught me how to turn one 'real' job plus years of customer service jobs into a very professional looking resume that highlights how those school jobs helped build many relevant skills.

Second, after you're done send it to your school career counselor and your smartest friends and beg for honest and constructive criticism.

The best advice I have ever heard is: One Page.

I watched someone with 20 years proffessional experience distill it down to: One Page.

I had a friend in Harvard Law School beat out the competition for a highly coveted government internship primarily because his resume didn't exceed: One Page.

He talked to his boss later and he said they threw away every resume over One Page just to start.

I've heard that it's important to only put down your work experiences applicable to the position you're applying for. Makes sense, but i'm sure a lot of us are guilty of not doing this....

My biggest Resume tip is: Keep your Resume Consistently Current, even when you're at a job you love.
Carve out at least an hour every month to look over and add or change your resume.
You cannot determine when opporturnity will knock on your door, and when it does you want to answer with an updated resume in hand.

Anyone have online Resume sites that are any good?

One tip that our career center gives is that it's not necessary to add the phrase "references available on repquest", the employer is probably going to request them anyways and it looks like a space filler.

My mom reads dozens of resumes of people who want to be on different comitees in the company and she says that the biggest mistakes are:
- Longer than one page. She scans all resumes onto her computer to file them and emails them to commitee members and when it's more than one page, she only scans the first page.
- Too much personal info. She once read a resume where a guy listed all his grandchildren and his golf scores. Never include marital status, health and birth date info. An employer can only ask health related question if they are necesarry for the position (i.e. "this positions requires that you be able to lift fifty pounds, can you do that?)
- Too vague. Try to write your objective to fit the position you're applying for.

Don't forget a cover letter.

These tips are great. I want to share my two favorites:

1) Always provide as much contact info as you can. Cell phone, fax, email, etc.

2) About email: Think about the email address you use. If you were an employer, would you hire someone who had your email address? It might be cool to you to have an email address of imtoosexyformyshirt69@...com, but would you want that on your resume? Pick something easy and professional, like your first initial and last name, or your initials and birthday. You can set up an email address just for work-related things and use your imtoosexy address for fun.

Currently trying to convince my sister, tenjousan@...com, to get herself another email address. Call me old-fashioned, but it's better to be too conservative on a resume.

KappaStargirl,
Your tip was both useful and funny as hell. "imtoosexyformyshirt69.com" -- LOL!

It's such a good point though, I've worked in a "creative" industry and the emails on top of the resumes have really been "too cute for words". I always put those at the bottom of the pile.
violets

Too true. There's a story at my school... MIT Information Services *hates* changing people's email addresses, and even if you have a legitimate reason (e.g. you get married and your maiden name is part of your username) it can take up to a year to process the change :rolleyes: ... so they warn people to think carefully about their usernames. They tell a story about a guy who was chuckling over the "really cool username" he'd picked for himself, until he sat down to write his resume and realized "Email: shithead@mit.edu" didn't look very professional. :D

My resume tips:

1. One page. (Unless you're applying for a job in academia, in which case you really want a CV listing your research, publications, etc.)

2. If you're in school or newly graduated, list your education first. If you're experienced, list employment first unless you went to an Ivy+ school.

3. Education and employment should be in reverse chronological order.

4. Employment should be relevant. If you're applying for a software job, don't list, say, your old paper route.

5. If you've volunteered at controversial orgs like Planned Parenthood, don't list them. Other volunteer work is ok if it's relevant.

6. Leave lots of whitespace. Recruiters and interviewers love to make notes in the margins, and no whitespace leads to a cluttered look.

7. Include buzzwords. Many employers scan in resumes and then do keyword searches on them, and/or do keyword searches on monster.com, hotjobs, etc. If your resume doesn't have the right keywords, they'll never see it even if you'd be a perfect fit.

what are some good keywords

This may seem really basic, but double-check your spelling! Spell check does not catch everything. Our company is looking for an admin. assistant, and you would not believe how many people misspelled either a) our company's name, or b) my name (I was listed as the contact person). If you really wanted to work here, I think you can take the extra five minutes to check your spelling.

I ABSOLUTELY have to say that this cannot be emphasized enough - seemingly tiny things can SABOTAGE you.

I was the office manager for a small financial services company for awhile and my boss told me to find my own replacement - he placed the ad but I went through all the resumes, made the initial phone calls, and did the initial interviews. In a one month period, I learned more about interviewing than any book could have ever taught me.

EMAIL - Absolutely NOTHING scandalous, racy, political, controversial EVER. My boss threw out one resume where the applicant was perfectly qualified for the position but her email was something like "sk8erchick@email.com"

Keep it short and simple. If they want to contact you that way, make it easy for them - not a long string of letters and numbers that stand for something clever that your friends think is funny. The employer will make a typo, and you won't get the message.

make sure the email address is current - along with all your contact info, for that matter.

STRUCTURE - no typos or grammar. period. no excuses. if you aren't clever enough to find someone who will read one page for you and fix the typos, then you are too lazy to deserve this job. sorry.

ANSWERING MACHINES - guess what? sometimes, the employer might actually like your resume and want to meet you for an interview. 9 times out of 10 - they will use a telephone to contact you. so then they call and they hear some crazy music and you and your roommates screaming that "Sorry! we're too damn drunk to answer the phone right now! Leave us a message or just stop by with more beer!" Congratulations - you are on the Fast Track to the World of Unemployment. :p

LESS THAN ILLUSTRIOUS JOBS - ok, we're all college students. chances are, not all of your paychecks came from prestigious research assistantships and fancy law firms. that's ok. and obviously you want to show yourself in the best light, but for goodness sake, you are fooling NO ONE if you say you were a "customer service specialist" at Burger King. Dude, you were selling fries. get over it.
:rolleyes:

Here's a no-brainer: Be Honest. You never know who'll see your resume on the other end.

I left a private company earlier this year to come to this school (a community college). A woman who had worked at the company faxed in her resume saying she had supervised Department X. (I work on the same floor as HR, so we share the fax machine.) I knew this wasn't true, and I ached to tell HR about it. Turns out I didn't have to -- she was never considered because she didn't submit a cover letter.

Would anyone here have told?

If you're just graduating go to your school's Career Services office. They can really help you.

LOL...two more really good calls!

I just re-structured my resume for an interview and I think another good tip is to vary your word choice. Use a thesaurus if need be.

websites
 

I recently made a resume packet for the students in my orientation to psychology class (for an assignment they have to write their resumes) so I have a few webs sites that I found and thought could be useful.

http://www.quintcareers.com/functional_resume.html
Most students only consider chronological resumes, there are also functional. This site describes what one is and who might want to consider using it.

The whole www.quintcareers.com website is loaded with info. I also directed them to:
http://www.quintcareers.com/action_verbs.html
for a list of action verbs

http://search.officeupdate.microsoft...lery/ct116.asp
has templates for resumes

http://www.collegegrad.com/resumes/index.shtml
templates and guidelines for resumes

http://www.jobweb.com
samples of functional, electronic, and chronological resumes.

I have a checklist at work of things to check for in resumes. I made it to give to the students when they are doing peer reviews but I'll post it here if I think about it. Someone may have mentioned this but (at my univ anyway) career services is not just for current students, alumni can use it as well! I got career magazines from them that I found useful.

I'm updating my resume...

Is this enough?
My personal information
Objective
Education
Work Experience

I want to keep it really simple...anything else that I should add?

Bump!

I think everyone can take a look at these suggestions and get new ideas!:)

Professional sounding mail addresses are important and often overlooked.

How can you expect someone to take you seriously if you list your email on your resume as

BIGSEXXXY69@hotmail.com

:confused:

When a company scans a resume what are some of the "buzz" words that they are looking for?

Buzzwords: Depends on your field. For instance, if you're a software engineer, you can include a skills section with every computer language you know at all well. Also, work keywords into your descriptions of previously held jobs, e.g. "Built a Web interface to an Oracle database using HTML, JavaScript, and Perl, on a Unix Solaris platform."

It's not really a tip...but a question
 

I was wondering whether or not it's considered appropriate to put your sorority or fraternity on the resume--particularly if you have held leadership positions within the organization (president vice president...) I've never put it on, but is it any different than being on a varsity sport or running other club when it come to resumes?

I think you should put your fraternity and sorority on your resume especially if you have held a leadership position. Also you never know who may be apart of your GLO in company you want to work for.

While I was in school, looking for summer internships and my first job out of college, I listed my sorority along with a couple of the higher offices I held.

Now, I no longer list my sorority. I do list Order of Omega, though, because it's more of an honorary, and sometimes this leads to questions about my affiliation.

You never know who may be a member of your GLO or have a close relative or friend who is... OTOH, you never know who may have negative associations with your GLO (they were cut during rush and are still bitter, their ex was a member, etc - not very mature attitudes but it does happen) or be anti-greek in general.

I'm afraid I don't know what the order of Omega is...I'm a local. I think I've run into the only occassion where I interviewed with a sister--she happened to be a founding member and was thrilled we still existed (we're 16 years old, and we really need an alumnae association) She saw my lavalier and put two and two together. So I don't think there would be alot of anti DH sentiment, but I doubt that there would be many instances where it would be positively IDed, either...does that make a difference?

DHgirl,
Order of Omega is a greek honor society.

I'm actually working on my resume right now and do have my sorority listed on there. Like is said above it could work for or against you. The main reason I have mine listed is because I was treasurer and assistant treasurer before that and listed what my responsibilities were. Being responsible for a several thousands of $$, creating a budget, working with committees and officers, etc. was no easy feat and required a lot of work, not to mention trust from others that I would be honest. Not everyone would agree with me, but I guess that's why it's my resume!

I just ran across this regarding how long a resume should be.
http://editorial.careers.msn.com/articles/length/
Personally, there is no way I could fit everything on one page unless it was about 3pt font and then no one could even read it if they wanted to! My contact info, education, and professional organizations alone take up 1/2 a page.

Ok....my resume is two pages flat - and I've kept it as concise as possible; I've only put down about half of my work experience, and everything applies to my career path. As much as I try, it still comes out at two pages (if kept at a reasonable font)

Now...is this going to be a huge problem?

If you're looking for entry level positions, some companies trash resume`s in excess of one page. Are you describing everything you do in too much depth? You don't have to make everything you do sound earth-shattering. I know some-people who list job despcriptions/accomplishments for clubs/societies they are in. If I held a title, I list that as a one worder description. That I ran meetings and organized events is implied and obvious--therefore unecessary to include. I have been compiling a resume book for a student professional society that I'm president of, and every person who has submitted a resume over one page has NOT needed two. Get someone else--older/more experienced than you who has been in the proffessional world--to look at it . Right off, they're going to see things they think are either irrelevant or redundant. (I had my dad take a look at mine, he hires people all the time, so I really listen to what he has to say.) You can go to two pages when you have years of experience.

I know someone with 25 years of proffessional exerience, with all that entails, who's resume came out to exactly: One Page.

If you are still in college or just a few years out and you are going beyond, One Page, try harder.

Or lets put it this way. Make your resume: One Page. Just do it.

I'm going to see someone in the career office this week...it's weird, I've kept things as short and sweet as possible....but I'm going to need help in keeping it down under two pages. I think my problem wasn't the depth that I described things in, but the number of jobs that I listed.

I guess this is why they have the career center at schools. Thanks for the advice.

Listing Greek affiliation
 

I have always put my sorority and leadership positions held on my resume. Through the sorority, I actually gained more "work" experience and leadership than through any job I've ever had. I guess my question is what position do you put on there? And as an alumna, I continue to work my way up through regional position....do I list those, as well?

Heather Brown
Delta Zeta

If you have one, put at the bottom of your resume "portfolio available upon request". I, as well as many of my friends, have received many phone calls for interview requests based on that. Employers love to see examples of previous work. In my portfolio, I have my awards, writing samples from both school and my internship, and other important documents. It's great if you're nervous during an interview because it can get you and the employer to open up and talk about your experiences.

As a JMC major the worse mistake you can make is to misspell someone's name.
I have been too scared to write my resume because I don't know what to write. UGH!!!!

Another tip - make sure your resume is scannable if you're sending it in to a larger company or through email. If you don't know if the company uses a scanner, best thing to do is call and ask for the HR department and ask someone. Better to ask and know than assume.

For scannable resumes, take your basic resume, convert all text to a TrueType font (Courier, Arial or Times New Roman are standards) and remove all special formatting like bolding, italics, bullets etc. If your resume can't be scanned, it won't matter how many buzz words you use.

Always send a cover letter, even when applying through email. You can attach you resume to the email but some companies won't accept attachments. Again, you can call and ask or leave some space after the letter text and then paste in your resume. You can use the chevrons to make sure people keep reading, like
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this :)