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Resume Development A resume is an intentional sales and marketing document, whose purpose is to help you obtain a job interview. A resume should be succinct, brief, targeted to a specific career field and address the needs of a specific employer. An effective resume should market your relevant skills, knowledge, and accomplishments. In order to accomplish this task, it is possible that you may have to develop several versions of your resume in order to conduct an effective and targeted job search.
Writing a good resume is a time consuming process and it is not uncommon to have several major revisions before completing the final version. The content of a resume must be focused upon a particular career field and types of employers in order to be specific enough to get the desired results, an interview. Choosing the right words and phrases are critical in selling your marketable skills, and experiences. A resume is an individual document which should be designed by the owner of the resume and it must reflect a person's unique qualifications and background. This highly personal document should not be prepared by a stranger or hurriedly developed in a generic word processing template or wizard function.
Nuts and Bolts Good resumes may be presented in the following formats: chronological, functional, or a combination of the two. Each type has it advantages and its disadvantages. A good rule of thumb is that a chronological resume is a good format for traditionally aged college students with an average amount of experience and related activities. Functional resumes may be the most helpful for career changers, nontraditional students, and people with gaps in their employment history.
A resume generally addressees the following broad categories:
| Contact Section | who are you? where can you be reached, including email address |
| Objective Statement | what do you want to do? (Be brief!) |
| Experience Section | what can you? Abilities, Skills |
| Education Section | what have you learned? Degrees? Training? Certifications? |
| Employment Section | what have you done? Work? Leadership? Action Verbs |
Additional categories and subcategories may include:
| Computer Skills | Technical Skills | Laboratory Skills |
| Qualifications Summary | Assets | Abilities |
| Accomplishments | Cooperative Education | Internship Experience |
| Honors | Courses | Scholarships |
| Leadership | Professional Experience | Languages |
| Projects | Skills | Volunteer Activities |
| Community Service | Presentations | Training |
| Publications | References | Professional Development |
| Activities | Achievements | Study Abroad |
The type of resume and categories you choose are determined by several variables including educational status, i.e. traditional student, non-traditional student, alumni, or may be determined by other factors, i.e. gaps in employment, length of employment, change of career, or experience.
Other factors to be considered when developing a resume are:
- Before you begin, complete a comprehensive review of one's skills, accomplishments and qualifications in order to better target the resume to your targeted audience.
- Categories should be sequenced to reflect what is most important to the employer or industry, and your career objective.
- The sequencing and choice of categories should be customized to best reflect your experience and the qualifications for the company, job, or industry one has targeted.
- One-page resumes are preferred by virtually all employers for most entry-level positions.
- There are exceptions to every rule and some fields, specifically education and non-profit employment tolerate a two-page resume format.
- When preparing a two-page resume, make sure the most marketable/critical information is on the first page.
- A good rule of thumb is 1 page for every 6-10 years of professional work experience.
- Be sure to utilize language and terminology that is employer, industry or job specific.
- Well organized resumes are visually appealing and do not contain ANY spelling, typographical, grammatical, or punctuation errors.
- Every good resume must be concisely written in an organized format, and presents the most important information first.
- Begin each statement or phrase with powerful action verbs; statements are best used in a bullet-style format and should be less than 5 lines; eliminate all unnecessary words.
- REMEMBER! The content of a resume should be highly tailored to reinforce your objective or purpose.
- Your most recent information should come first; most recent education, employment, leadership, etc.
- Utilize a readable/familiar font, i.e. Times New Roman, Arial/Helvetica, Century Schoolbook; size should be uniform and fall in the range of 10-12 font (except for name).
- Employers who review individual resumes may spend very little time on each resume, usually only twenty to thirty seconds.
- Resumes should be printed on high quality (16-25 lb.) bond paper; white, off-white or ivory preferred; beware of colors that do not photocopy well, such as gray.
- Many large corporations and technology-oriented firms use scanners and software programs to complete the initial screening of resumes.
- Scannable resumes require a specific format and a separate checklist is available to review the development of this kind of resume
Please examine the following resumes and use them as a guide, not a template. Your resume may look similar, but if it is a clone of the example, it will not highlight what is most important about you and your abilities. Pay close attention to the content of your resume and to your target audience. Please use the attached list of action verbs to assist you in the development of your highly successful personal marketing tool, your resume!
Another good file to look at is our suggestions of verbs to use in your resume.