I once told a client that résumés are like bonsai - you must craft your knowledge, skills and accomplishments to fit into the confines of a single sheet of paper.
Happy pruning!
Use these four tips to boost your résumé's chance of survival:
- Insert dates for everything. Don't try to cover up your age or a gap in experience by omitting dates. Use your cover letter to explain any peculiarities.
- Use buzzwords. Many HR folks look for certain buzzwords from the job description. Don't expect your generic résumé to make it through; customize it for each potential job.
- Be specific. "Assisted" or "worked on" is much fuzzier than "designed," "wrote," or "led." When choosing verbs, use ones that mean something.
- No typos. This goes without saying, but too many résumés are full of them nonetheless. Proofread, proofread again, and then ask someone else to proofread once more.
Your resume should be a concise summary of the high points of your education, work experience, and other qualifications relevant to your audience’s needs and to your employment interests, not a complete history of your life. It communicates your professional qualifications to employers, to interest them in interviewing you, and it creates their first impression of you. It is a marketing tool and an introduction to you and your experiences. Do enough research about the employer and the field to decide which messages are most important to your audience, and communicate these messages succinctly and clearly in a visually appealing format. Here are some guidelines to help you do this:
Style
- Proofread to eliminate all spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors.
- Use action verbs and strong adjectives
- Make it future or present oriented, suggesting that "I am this kind of person, with these abilities, as my past record demonstrates."
- Avoid repeating words or phrases.
- Leave out unnecessary words, sentences, and phrases such as "Duties included / Hired to / Project involved."
- Avoid stilted or confusing language. Ask yourself, "Would I talk like that?"
- Don’t use the first person I or any pronouns.
- Be consistent and use the same grammatical style throughout.
- Avoid self-flattering terms such as "highly skilled, outstanding, or excellent." Describe your accomplishments effectively and let readers decide for themselves that you are well-qualified.
- Be honest and accurate, but not overly modest.
- Convey through the style and content of your resume an understanding of your audience’s needs, priorities, hiring criteria, and vocabulary.
Format
- Stick to 1 page; use 2 pages if you have an advanced degree or extensive experience (10+ years).
- Make the page easy to scan and graphically-pleasing: leave sufficient white space.
- Select a format that suits your qualifications. Don’t automatically follow someone else’s, which may not suit what you have to say.
- Underline, bold face, and use bullets to emphasize your credentials.
Content
- Put name, address, and phone number at the top of the page. If you have a 2nd page, repeat your name at the top.
- Highlight skills, accomplishments, capabilities, and work experience. Give evidence of your personal impact: show not only that you completed tasks but that you contributed to organizational goals.
- Include marketable and/or relevant data only; for example, include classes that have been most important in your education and are most relevant to the type of work you seek; don’t provide an extensive list of courses.
- Choose topic headings that invite your readers’ interest, e.g., "related experience, overseas experience, or skills" rather than "employment or other."
- Cite numbers to convey size and/or scale of project, budget, and staff supervised.
- Give examples that demonstrate desirable personality traits such as leadership, interpersonal facility, confidence, and independence.
- Minimize personal information and omit unrelated memberships, age, marital and health status, and information that is repetitive, implicit (e.g. high school graduation for a college graduate), or out-of-date. If you are a US citizen or hold a permanent resident visa, include this if readers might have reason to think otherwise.
- Generally, it is a good idea to exclude data relevant to salary expectations, religious or political affiliations, and geographic descriptions.
- References are usually omitted, although you should line up at least 3 (including 1 or 2 who are non-academic) at the beginning of your job search. They can be listed separately and made available when requested. Employers assume that “references are available upon request,” so leave this phrase off.
First, you need to know how far back in time to detail in this document. As a general rule, if you are applying to graduate school and have at least two years of work experience, your high school activities should not be included in your resume. However, there are exceptions to this rule. For example, if you won a prestigious national award in high school, you may certainly consider including this important recognition.
Other general rules for the resume:
- There should be no more than four bullet points beneath each position.
- Each bullet point should ideally be no more than two lines long.
- To ease the reader’s eye strain, the font should not be smaller than 10 pt.
- Margins should be as close to one inch all around as possible – no lower than 0.7 inches.
Limit the number of bullet points describing your early entry-level roles and instead expand the space dedicated to those in which you made the most impact. For instance, if you were promoted from an entry-level programming position with your company, then you don’t even need to dedicate a separate line to describe that first role. Instead, you can simply impress the reader by describing the fast pace of promotion in a line of the job description, like this:
Team Lead, IT Consulting Company 2007-Present
Twice promoted from Analyst (2007-2008) to Senior Analyst (2008) and then Team Lead in record 12 months, a full 4 times faster than the average rate of promotion.
What if one position has allowed you significant leadership opportunities and impact? Or what if you have been in your current role for several years? How can you detail all that you have accomplished in just four bullet points? The trick is to break that down into sections, like this for example:
Private Equity Associate, PE Firm 2008-Present
Lines of job description here…
Leadership Accomplishments Include:
- First point
- Second point
- Third point
- Fourth point
Financial Impacts Include:
- First point
- Second point
- Third point
- Fourth point
Keep in mind that the majority – if not all – of those bullet points should include quantifiable impact that you had on the organization. Breaking up a bulk of text with numbers and section headings makes the entire document more compelling.
Finally, to ensure that your document is easy to read and keeps the admissions officer’s attention, you need to include ample white space. To add some white space above each position in Microsoft Word, highlight the title line of each row (hold the Ctrl button down as you click to keep them all highlighted), then click on Format, Paragraph, then in the Spacing Before box try at least 4 pt. (if you have more space left on the page at the end you can go to 6 pt.). Do the same Ctrl highlighting for the bullet points throughout the document and try 2 pt. or 3 pt. spacing before each of those lines.
Check out this pdf file (viewable in Adobe Reader) to see the difference this little formatting trick can make.
Management Skills
Administered
Analyzed
Assigned
Chaired
Consolidated
Contracted
Coordinated
Delegated
Developed
Directed
Evaluated
Executed
Organized
Oversaw
Planned
Prioritized
Produced
Recommended
Reorganized
Reviewed
Scheduled
Supervised
Communication Skills
Addressed
Arbitrated
Arranged
Authored
Co-authored
Collaborated
Corresponded
Developed
Directed
Drafted
Enlisted
Formulated
Influenced
Interpreted
Lectured
Mediated
Moderated
Negotiated
Persuaded
Promoted
Proposed
Publicized
Reconciled
Recruited
Spoke
Translated
Wrote
Research Skills
Clarified
Collected
Critiqued
Diagnosed
Evaluated
Examined
Extracted
Identified
Inspected
Interpreted
Interviewed
Investigated
Organized
Reviewed
Summarized
Surveyed
Systematized
Technical Skills
Assembled
Built
Calculated
Computed
Designed
Devised
Engineered
Fabricated
Maintained
Operated
Pinpointed
Programmed
Remodeled
Repaired
Solved
Operated
Pinpointed
Programmed
Remodeled
Repaired
Solved
Teaching Skills
Adapted
Advised
Clarified
Coached
Communicated
Conducted
Coordinated
Developed
Enabled
Encouraged
Evaluated
Explained
Facilitated
Guided
Informed
Instructed
Lectured
Persuaded
Set goals
Stimulated
Taught
Trained |
Financial Skills
Administered
Allocated
Analyzed
Appraised
Audited
Balanced
Budgeted
Calculated
Computed
Developed
Managed
Planned
Projected
Researched
Creative Skills
Acted
Conceptualized
Created
Customized
Designed
Developed
Directed
Established
Fashioned
Illustrated
Instituted
Integrated
Performed
Planned
Proved
Revised
Revitalized
Set up
Shaped
Streamlined
Structured
Helping Skills
Assessed
Assisted
Clarified
Coached
Counseled
Demonstrated
Diagnosed
Educated
Facilitated
Familiarized
Guided
Inspired
Motivated
Participated
Provided
Referred
Rehabilitated
Represented
Reinforced
Supported
Taught
Trained
Verified
Clerical or Detail Skills
Approved
Arranged
Catalogued
Classified
Collected
Compiled
Dispatched
Executed
Filed
Generated
Implemented
Inspected
Monitored
Operated
Ordered
Organized
Prepared
Processed
Purchased
Recorded
Retrieved
Screened
Specified
Systematized
Tabulated
Validated
Stronger Verbs for Accomplishments
Accelerated
Achieved
Attained
Completed
Conceived
Convinced
Discovered
Doubled
Effected
Eliminated
Expanded
Expedited
Founded
Improved
Increased
Initiated
Innovated
Introduced
Invented
Launched
Mastered
Originated
Overcame
Overhauled
Pioneered
Reduced
Resolved
Revitalized
Spearheaded
Strengthened
Transformed
Upgraded |
From "To Boldly Go: Practical Career Advice for Scientists", by Peter S. Fiske
The use of action words / power verbs, are essential in the promotion of your skills and experience. Using these words at the start of each bullet point under the details of your employment will assist the reader in noticing your key achievements.
The words you use will obviously depend upon your experience / industry so try not to just stuff your CV full of power words in the hope that this will look good. For example, a candidate applying for a managerial position will want to make use of words such as "oversaw, developed, improved and reduced", whereas someone looking for a more creative role will want to use words such as "designed, compiled and created".
Power verbs to accentuate organisational skills:
Arranged
Categorized
Collected
Compiled
Corrected
Distributed
Filed
Incorporated
Logged
Maintained
Monitored
Observed | Ordered
Organized
Prepared
Recorded
Registered
Reserved
Responded
Reviewed
Scheduled
Screened
Supplied
Updated |
Power verbs used to highlight achievements:
Achieved
Built
Created
Developed
Established
Expanded
Founded
Identified
Implemented | Increased
Initiated
Instigated
Launched
Lead
Managed
Reduced
Solved
Streamlined |
Other power verbs:
Administered
Advised
Analyzed
Approved
Completed
Conducted
Controlled
Coordinated
Defined
Delivered
Demonstrated | Designed
Instructed
Introduced
Maintained
Negotiated
Oversaw
Performed
Planned
Presented
Supervised
Supported |
SAMPLE
More tips here:
