|
I agree that it MUST be one page. You're young, and you can't have that much experience that you would need more. If you are having a hard time fitting it onto one page, have someone else look at it and see what you can cut. You can tweak the margins and font size a *little* but you might be including TMI. Your descriptions should be brief and full of exciting action words.
Resumes are sort of like seduction -- you want to appear so interesting and awesome that they want to interview you to find out more, but you don't want to let them know everything before you have the chance to talk to them in person.
I'm not sure if you're in college or out, but I don't think that when you're starting out gaps are that important, as long as you can explain them in an interview. Are there many gaps? Is it clear that during the time you weren't working, you were in school? If there are only a couple or you were in school, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
If your experience doesn't line up with your objective, try to make it as best you can. Try to describe your experiences in a somewhat general sense that conveys to the reader that while the *experience* itself wasn't perfectly in line with what you want to do, you gained skills that would be valuable to a potential employer. A cover letter is also good for connecting past experiences to what you want to do in the future -- you can say how you learned to do or be X by doing whatever you did at your last jobs.
I'm not sure about how far back you should go. It might depend on the situation and the job. For example, I have two resumes I use -- one that lists jobs I had before law school, and one that doesn't. I use one or the other depending upon what seems right for the position.
|