Writing a resume
14/02/09 21:52
Having a resume that can effectively advertise your strengths is the most crucial tool in the job hunt. It’s the first thing a potential employer will look at when you submit your application, and will be the primary deciding factor in whether you’ll be invited for an interview. Today I’d like to go a bit deeper into what it takes to make a good resume.
Submit digitally, and think digitally. Back when I was entering the job market, I was told it was all about making it look good on paper. Choose your font well. Format it nicely. Choose a good paper stock. All of that is irrelevant now. Paper resumes are an anachronism and don’t work in the modern office. Submitting your resume on paper is a sure way to not get your resume seen, since it requires physical effort to process it, copy it, and make sure all the appropriate people have copies of it. The vast majority of resumes are emailed around from one department to another. The first time your future boss will see your resume, it’ll probably be as an email attachment from someone in human resources. For that reason, when you compose your email, don’t be thinking “How will this print?”. Think “How will this look on a computer screen?”. I’ve seen far too many resumes come across my email as Word documents that don’t look correct until you choose “Print Layout”. Wrong! Print Layout means nothing anymore. Focus on the content, not the layout (unless you’re applying for some sort of design job, in which case your resume can be considered part of your portfolio). I even saw a resume recently that was so heavily formatted that not only did it not look correctly on screen, it wouldn’t even print correctly. I ended up converting it to ASCII text, pasting it into Notepad, and printing that. Formatting is really not important. I’ve hired people who’ve submitted their resumes in ASCII before. Content is key. One other point I’d like to mention is that most people tend to submit their resumes as Word documents, but I suggest that if you really care about formatting, a PDF document is a far better vehicle. It’s always formatted correctly and presents very well.
One page or two (or six), it really doesn’t matter that much. I’ve seen a lot of people say that it’s crucial to keep the resume on one page, or two. In my mind, two pages is a nice compromise, since it’s often hard to get all the important information on one page. If you want to cut back on a section or two, cut back on “Skills” or “Objective”. Most people tend to ignore these sections, since Objective is really just a wishy-washy feel-good mission statement, and Skills has plenty of potential for deception. We can generally tell what your skills are from looking at your prior employment. Conversely, if you feel you have to cut too much about previous employment to get it all on one page, don’t. The last thing I want to do is to have to email the person back asking for more information. On the other end of the scale, I’ve received up to six-page resumes in the past. I often look at them with a bit of a “What the heck is this?” look on my face, but I certainly don’t outright reject them. Most people going over resumes aren’t actually reading the whole thing in detail. They’re just skimming over it, trying to find the highlights. They’ll read the details later if they find the resume interesting, and it’s often nice to have the details available. With that in mind…
Make the highlights easy to find. The most frustrating thing about reading a resume is not being able to find what you’re looking for. Recently I was looking through a stack of employment applications from a local university. Most of them seemed to follow a similar template, as if they’d all copied the same original file and filled in their own details. Unfortunately, in this particular template, it was actually quite hard to immediately see the previous work experience section. Make sure that previous work experience is right there on the first page, under a clear bolded heading that’s impossible to miss. Call it something very obvious like “Previous Work Experience”. Make sure you delineate clearly each of your previous jobs so that it’s easy to tell when one job ended and another started.
Content content content. Employers want hard facts and details about what you did. “Worked well in a team environment” is not the sort of thing they care about. They’ll be able to get to that in the interview. What they need to know quickly by looking at the resume is “What do they know?” and “How smart are they?” and “Can they do this job?”. These are all things that can be gleaned from a careful analysis of what you actually did in your prior employment, so keep this in mind when detailing your achievements. Talk about what you actually did. Not about your team, or your environment, or what you learnt, or how you were promoted. Use action words and talk about the actual work you did.
Don’t lie. If you say you did something in a resume, and you get an interview, you’ll almost certainly be asked about it, especially if it was something worth lying over. If you haven’t really done it, you may not have the skills to answer the relevant questions, and the interviewers will very likely see right through you, since it’s very likely they know more about the subject than you do (otherwise you wouldn’t be lying about it in the first place). A colleague of mine once received a resume from someone who claimed credit for doing work that my colleague was responsible for. It was a short and painful interview.
Extracurricular activities and other stuff. For the most part, people don’t really care too much if you’re an avid hiker or photographer. These are mostly irrelevant to your work. That is, they’re irrelevant unless they’re relevant, such as if you’re applying for a guide job, or a photography job. In fact, if you have extracurricular skills that are relevant, that’s gold! Potential employers love to see people taking an interest in things related to their work. It means they’ll be motivated, probably will like their job, and they’ll constantly be upgrading their skills for free. In the computer industry, this is huge. If you make programs or games or websites for fun, go into some detail on that, if it’s at all relevant to the position you’re applying for.
To personalize or not? Some people say you should tweak each resume for each position. By all means, if you want to, go ahead, but if you’re applying to multiple companies for similar positions, there shouldn’t be much need for tweaking. Personalization of an application really belongs in the cover letter, which we’ll cover in our next article.
I hope I’ve given you some insight into what’s going on in the minds of a potential employer when they’re looking at your resume. Good luck! Next up… cover letters.
Submit digitally, and think digitally. Back when I was entering the job market, I was told it was all about making it look good on paper. Choose your font well. Format it nicely. Choose a good paper stock. All of that is irrelevant now. Paper resumes are an anachronism and don’t work in the modern office. Submitting your resume on paper is a sure way to not get your resume seen, since it requires physical effort to process it, copy it, and make sure all the appropriate people have copies of it. The vast majority of resumes are emailed around from one department to another. The first time your future boss will see your resume, it’ll probably be as an email attachment from someone in human resources. For that reason, when you compose your email, don’t be thinking “How will this print?”. Think “How will this look on a computer screen?”. I’ve seen far too many resumes come across my email as Word documents that don’t look correct until you choose “Print Layout”. Wrong! Print Layout means nothing anymore. Focus on the content, not the layout (unless you’re applying for some sort of design job, in which case your resume can be considered part of your portfolio). I even saw a resume recently that was so heavily formatted that not only did it not look correctly on screen, it wouldn’t even print correctly. I ended up converting it to ASCII text, pasting it into Notepad, and printing that. Formatting is really not important. I’ve hired people who’ve submitted their resumes in ASCII before. Content is key. One other point I’d like to mention is that most people tend to submit their resumes as Word documents, but I suggest that if you really care about formatting, a PDF document is a far better vehicle. It’s always formatted correctly and presents very well.
One page or two (or six), it really doesn’t matter that much. I’ve seen a lot of people say that it’s crucial to keep the resume on one page, or two. In my mind, two pages is a nice compromise, since it’s often hard to get all the important information on one page. If you want to cut back on a section or two, cut back on “Skills” or “Objective”. Most people tend to ignore these sections, since Objective is really just a wishy-washy feel-good mission statement, and Skills has plenty of potential for deception. We can generally tell what your skills are from looking at your prior employment. Conversely, if you feel you have to cut too much about previous employment to get it all on one page, don’t. The last thing I want to do is to have to email the person back asking for more information. On the other end of the scale, I’ve received up to six-page resumes in the past. I often look at them with a bit of a “What the heck is this?” look on my face, but I certainly don’t outright reject them. Most people going over resumes aren’t actually reading the whole thing in detail. They’re just skimming over it, trying to find the highlights. They’ll read the details later if they find the resume interesting, and it’s often nice to have the details available. With that in mind…
Make the highlights easy to find. The most frustrating thing about reading a resume is not being able to find what you’re looking for. Recently I was looking through a stack of employment applications from a local university. Most of them seemed to follow a similar template, as if they’d all copied the same original file and filled in their own details. Unfortunately, in this particular template, it was actually quite hard to immediately see the previous work experience section. Make sure that previous work experience is right there on the first page, under a clear bolded heading that’s impossible to miss. Call it something very obvious like “Previous Work Experience”. Make sure you delineate clearly each of your previous jobs so that it’s easy to tell when one job ended and another started.
Content content content. Employers want hard facts and details about what you did. “Worked well in a team environment” is not the sort of thing they care about. They’ll be able to get to that in the interview. What they need to know quickly by looking at the resume is “What do they know?” and “How smart are they?” and “Can they do this job?”. These are all things that can be gleaned from a careful analysis of what you actually did in your prior employment, so keep this in mind when detailing your achievements. Talk about what you actually did. Not about your team, or your environment, or what you learnt, or how you were promoted. Use action words and talk about the actual work you did.
Don’t lie. If you say you did something in a resume, and you get an interview, you’ll almost certainly be asked about it, especially if it was something worth lying over. If you haven’t really done it, you may not have the skills to answer the relevant questions, and the interviewers will very likely see right through you, since it’s very likely they know more about the subject than you do (otherwise you wouldn’t be lying about it in the first place). A colleague of mine once received a resume from someone who claimed credit for doing work that my colleague was responsible for. It was a short and painful interview.
Extracurricular activities and other stuff. For the most part, people don’t really care too much if you’re an avid hiker or photographer. These are mostly irrelevant to your work. That is, they’re irrelevant unless they’re relevant, such as if you’re applying for a guide job, or a photography job. In fact, if you have extracurricular skills that are relevant, that’s gold! Potential employers love to see people taking an interest in things related to their work. It means they’ll be motivated, probably will like their job, and they’ll constantly be upgrading their skills for free. In the computer industry, this is huge. If you make programs or games or websites for fun, go into some detail on that, if it’s at all relevant to the position you’re applying for.
To personalize or not? Some people say you should tweak each resume for each position. By all means, if you want to, go ahead, but if you’re applying to multiple companies for similar positions, there shouldn’t be much need for tweaking. Personalization of an application really belongs in the cover letter, which we’ll cover in our next article.
I hope I’ve given you some insight into what’s going on in the minds of a potential employer when they’re looking at your resume. Good luck! Next up… cover letters.