Many people think that résumés are only used to screen applications received for an advertised opening. However, a résumé can be a critical tool in your overall career planning and strategy. Preparing a resume:
Brings focus and direction to your career search. You will be encouraged to further articulate your goals and analyze all relevant skills.
Creates a more defined and permanent image of your working self. You may come to more fully accept your desires, goals, strengths, and accomplishments.
Helps people on your referral network know you more fully. They can provide more relevant information and leads if they clearly understand how you see yourself, your abilities, and your goals.
Extends your reach. Your information and referral networks can more readily expand if your contacts have your résumé to pass on to others.
Helps you prepare and become more confident. A review of achievements, skills, and objectives can be useful in developing talking points and fostering feelings of control. A glance at your résumé immediately before a meeting or interview can be a worthwhile last step in preparation.
Shapes and reinforces the impressions that potential employers and resource people have of you.
Sends the message that you are serious about your job search. You have made the effort to explore your current goals and learned much about who you are and what you can do. You have gone to the trouble of presenting the results in a positive and effective package.
There is no "right" way to do a résumé. You have room to display your individuality and creativity as you communicate what you do and how you do it. The facts you choose to include and the relationships you draw among them reveal much about yourself. Although flexible, résumés do have some basic characteristics. The following summarizes some of the more important and universal components:
A résumé is written for a specific readership determined by your career aims. These are people who can offer desirable opportunities or at least give you useful information. Because they are involved in your targeted organizations or industries, they may share certain values, interests, and concerns. Your résumé can therefore present information that is relevant to all of your chosen readers
A résumé almost always makes a brief statement about immediate career goals. It is the starting and focal point that begins to answer the two basic questions around which your résumé is organized: "What do you want from a job?" and "What will you give in return?" It determines the skills, experience, and accomplishments to be presented.
A résumé consists of statements about things and events observable by outside parties. All factual statements relate to what you can and want to do. Its body is essentially a series of statements describing the skills you can offer and any specific accomplishments that demonstrate them. Be concrete by including time, place, and relevant special conditions as well as quantifying these accomplishments when possible.
The content of an effective résumé is arranged to be easily followed by your targeted readers. You must be clear and concise in order to convey all key facts in the few moments they may initially give your résumé. Motivate them to read further.
The word "I" is not used as the subject of statements because it is simply understood.
Ex: Gathered information, reviewed blueprints, and prepared bids.
All statements should be based on and most will start with action words (verbs).
Ex: Hire, motivate, schedule, and evaluate performance of employees.
Descriptive words can be very useful if their meaning is clear and not implied by context.
Ex: Actively call on, counsel, and build business with existing clients.
Comparatives and superlatives should be used only if they are factually supported.
Ex: Opened a store with the lowest pre-opening expenses in company's history.
Ideas are generally best conveyed in the affirmative mode, which lends itself to simple statements and sets a positive tone.
Ex: Have established a record of working well within budgets and deadlines.
You want your readers to feel that you are taking them and yourself seriously. Text must be free of errors, printing sharp and readable, and paper of fine quality. You want to package your résumé in a way that meets the needs of your readers. Traditionally, this has meant fine paper and laser printing. However, with the advent of the internet, some employers may want only an unformatted electronic file.
Résumé development, almost by definition, involves cooperation. If you are struggling to capture your goals, skills, and accomplishments on paper, you may want to have an in-depth discussion with another person. By working to make someone else understand your past experience as well as what you want from your next career move, you will improve your self-understanding as well as your ability to make good decisions.
Once you have written your résumé and done all the editing you can, ask someone else to review your work. Because an outsider will read what you write, not what you mean, they can identify unexpressed assumptions and identify confusing language as well as help eliminate unnecessary words.
General skills come into play in a wide range of activities and are usually learned over time. Therefore, they can be easily transferred from one job to another. Some examples of general skills are:
Your skills are not limited to those gained in employment. Consider your "work" as any and all interactions with people, things, or information that create valued outcomes. Value-creating activities can include everything from child care, club leadership, neighborhood improvement, and general citizenship to hobbies, crafts, restoration, and sports. Because you may have used general skills for so long or so often, you may tend to forget or discount them. A career search, however, requires that you identify and present your capabilities to people who do not know you.
You can accomplish this by breaking down your work into critical steps:
Describe these steps using verb-based action phrases, and indicate the things, information, or persons that your actions have affected.
Ex: Reconciled foreign and domestic bank accounts.
Account for important tools and methods used as well as significant or unusual conditions under which you have worked.
Ex: Used Notice Library reference software to search CD-Rom databases.
Ex:Received top ratings in surveys completed by unusually demanding clientele.
State the purposes for which actions were taken if they are not evident.
Ex: Adapted computer systems to maintain marketing data and keep books.
Trace each step you have taken as your work has moved toward final results or do the reverse by going from outcomes to the tasks that have led to them. As you describe an action, you will often get additional ideas about those that have followed or preceded. Write out descriptions of all steps as you go. You may find that what seemed to be simple tasks and skills may take pages to fully describe.
Job-specific skills apply to only one type of work, company, or industry. They are often taught on the job or in short-term classroom settings. These skills are relatively easy to acquire and subject to rapid change and outdating.
Because of their volatility, job-specific skills are usually not weighed as heavily as general and character skills. Your résumé should highlight the character and general skills that are in-line with your objective. Having exactly the right job-specific skills required for a particular job is a plus, but it is often not essential.
Even though you may not have the exact skills sought by an employer, you may have demonstrated some in previous work that are surprisingly similar. For example, organizing a rummage sale, a shipping / receiving job, and temporary work as an inventory taker may have all involved skills relevant to work in retail management. If you thoroughly examine your work in all parts of your life, you may be surprised to find out how qualified you really are.
A highly individualized and focused cover letter should accompany and introduce your résumé whenever you do not personally present it to the reader. It directly relates your targeted, but still general résumé to the specifics of each contact you make.
A good cover letter assures the reader of your awareness of and thought about her organization and work as well as describing the contributions that you propose to make. It answers the following questions:
Did someone who knows both you and the organization encourage you to make the approach? Did you learn about the opportunity through active research? If so, this could be an indication of your motivation, thoroughness, focus, and goal orientation.
If your current needs and long-term goals are likely to be fulfilled by the job opportunity, you are probably a good risk for the prospective employer. As a motivated worker and active learner, you are apt to stay and become more productive.
By highlighting one or two key skills, you show your understanding of the employer's needs and expectations. Avoid needless repetition. Briefly mention your skills as a teaser -- a way to introduce and spark interest in your résumé.
Your closing will say much about your commitment to your career search. Tactful but assertive suggestions will improve your chances of progressing through the selection process. For example, you might choose wording that subtly assumes that an interview is upcoming. The issue is shifted from a question of whether an interview will take place, to one of when and where will it take place. This forces the reader to actively screen you out. You may want to expressly state your plans to follow-up so as to schedule a convenient time and place for an interview. By doing so, you send a message that you are a committed and confident person while making it very easy for the reader to go along with your plan.
This assertive, positive approach can be taken a step further by enclosing business reply cards on which readers can designate possible times and places for the proposed interview. Your cover letter and the résumé that it introduces should stimulate the necessary interest to make this strategy work.
Presentation is important to making a good impression. Use paper and print that matches or coordinates with the résumé. Quality paper and print make documents both easy and pleasing to read and give an underlying positive promotional tone to the facts that they present.