A resume is a tool. It is a key that should fit into a lock and open the door to an interview. When creating your resume, let go of the idea that your resume is you. Remember it is a means to an end.
Forget about personality and team building.Resume content boils down to skills, accomplishments, results and training/education; along with professional/volunteer experience in related/similar industries and organizations.
Don’t dump every job you’ve ever done into the resume.
Start with a target position and let that position be your guide.
Don’t be creative or clever.Take the specific job description you are applying for and crib from it. Use their language, emphasize the skills that they emphasize.Emphasize the accomplishments that are relevant to the goals in the job you’re after.
Skills are key words. Keep a running list of key words that are essential to doing the job(vs fitting into the culture). Match that list against the skills and accomplishments you put in your resume.
Make sure Skills lead to Results and Outcomes. For every skill you mention, try to provide information about where you used the skill and the difference it made, ideally in a form that anyone can understand. How many clients did you coach? What percentage of the people you hired received promotions? How much more efficiently did programs run thanks to the software you developed?
Try a functional resume.The idea is that you identify the top four skill areas and feature one key accomplishment using that skill. This is worthwhile exercise to help you be very discerning about the most important skills and your most significant achievements. (If you do create a functional resume, then the professional experience section typically includes two or three bullets for each position you’ve held but not the same items in the top skill section.)
Relevant Jobs. Relevant Skills.Employers are looking for people who know how to DO the job and who have worked and volunteered in a similar environment, meaning with similar clients, policies, programs and staff.
It’s as much what you don’t say as what you say. FORMAT is really, really important.The person or machine looking at your resume is SCANNING. So, design your resume so the most important items pop out when you scan. That means: bold, bullets, white space.
Remember it’s about YOU, and what you’ve done.In your employment history, put YOUR JOB TITLE before the names of the Organizations where you have worked. First and foremost, an employer wants to know what you have done and then they will look at where you have worked.
Experience before Education. Once you have a few years of professional experience, your education and training should not headline your resume.
Summary statement. When written clearly and well, a statement summarizing your experience helps guide the reader in appreciating the arc of your career and offers a place for you to emphasize key skills and experience.
Nonsense goes in the garbage. Read everything in the resume out loud. Al too often, in an effort to get in lots of key words, resume narrative makes no sense.