Résumé Tweaking
I have critiqued several resume’s for people over the past 5 years and I wanted to take a chance to write down some of the common issues I’ve seen.
Be organized
Your resume needs to show a high degree of organization. You don’t want to have a junior college degree listed under an “extra curricular” section and a bachelors degree listed under the “education” section. If your resume isn’t organized it leaves a bad impression. If you say you received the “Best student of the year” award from Yale, make sure that your time at Yale actually is listed on your resume. People will notice these types of things. At best they will think you are unorganized. At worse they will think you are lying about something.
Look at other resumes
Many people who are creating their resumes only have one or two examples to look at. Ideally you want to look at a bunch of resume examples and see how they would make you feel as a potential employer. Try to take note of the things that are helpful and use those attributes in your own resume. The stock word format probably isn’t your best choice. Try to find something that looks well designed, but will make your resume stand out from the average Joe who simply picked the standard Microsoft Word template.
Deal with gaps
The best way to deal with a gap in your resume is to not let one form in the first place. If you are off work for an extended period of time do one of the following:
- Enroll in some college courses.
- Start volunteering on a regular basis for a local non-profit.
- Join a mentoring group.
- Start helping an open source project.
- Do self directed study of a subject.
- Start some type of business.
- Start a website and build a community around it.
- Get an industry certification.
Ideally you want to do something specific that you can put on your resume. It doesn’t have to be something you do 40 hours per week, you just need to show that you were doing something productive with your time to help fill in the gap. If you already have a gap, try to find a few things from that time period that you did that were productive uses of your time that would look good on your resume. Education or certifications are good particularly when they lead to some type of specific recognition.
Customize for each job
You’ll get the best out of your resume if you can customize it for each job. For example, if you are looking at applying for a teaching job, you may want to move your educational qualifications to the top. Other jobs may be more interested in your work experience and education should be moved to the bottom. Tweaking a resume to try to emphasis similarities with the person who will be interviewing you is another good strategy if you have enough information in advance to do this.
Education
Education is important, but stay focused on what it lets you do. If you have an MBA, focus on any volunteer work you did, or how you’ve been able to help companies. People are becoming wary of MBA and other graduates who feel that their degree means they should pay more when often it just means they were the first to be fired in the last economic downturn.
Personal Life
Some people like to put personal life items on their resume. I have mixed feelings about this. On the plus side, it can help show that you are a well rounded person. On the negative side, many people entering the work force today are giving human resources a lot of problems because they expect their job to revolve around them and around the way they want to work. Too much on the personal side of things may be detrimental.
If you are interviewing with someone younger, the personal aspects might be more important. Almost time you can show similarities between yourself and the person interviewing. For example, if you know that the person interviewing you helps with the girl scouts, your involvement in the boy scouts might be a helpful thing to list.
