The Basics
- Your resume should look professional and be 1-2 pages in length.
- Make it easy to read:
- Select a simple font;
- Use bullet points;
- Bold or italicize the headings;
- Leave plenty of white space around the text.
- Do not use images, headers, footers, tables, charts or other embedded features.
- Have someone proofread your resume for spelling and grammatical errors.
- Use action verbs to highlight your accomplishments and support each statement with measurable results.
- Focus on your specific skills, experience, projects, and products; avoid general statements.
- Emphasize your skills and experience that are relevant to your career objective.
- Do not include references on your resume.
Resume Structure
Contact Information
- Name
- Professional designation (if applicable)
- Your preferred contact phone number
- E-mail address
- Links to relevant professional sites such as your LinkedIn URL
Career Objective
- Your career objective should be a single statement that summarizes your experience and highlights the position you are seeking.
- Make sure that the rest of your resume supports your stated objective.
- It is not necessary to include a career objective when you are applying for an advertised job.
Profile
- In the profile, summarize your qualifications. Include 4-6 statements that identify your best work-related skills and knowledge:
- Number of years of experience in your field;
- Key areas of technical knowledge in your field;
- Your best work-related skills; and
- A statement about your personality or attitude, and its impact on your work.
- If relevant to the position, include hardware, operating systems, software, and programming languages. List technologies in the order of your expertise with them. Include a heading “exposure to” for those technologies that you have used infrequently.
Work Experience
- Include relevant, professional work experience only.
- List the dates, your title, organization’s name, and location for each previous position.
- Briefly summarize your role, details about the business, and any specific technology you used. Include 4-6 statements for each position.
- Focus on your accomplishments, not on your job duties and responsibilities.
- Use action verbs: designed, analyzed, implemented, managed etc.
- Avoid popular “buzz” words and company specific jargon.
- Support your statements with measurable results. How did the organization benefit? Use numerical figures: size of project/budget in dollars, number of customers served, number of employees supervised, dollars saved, time reduced, sales increased, etc.
Education/Professional Development
- Include educational institution(s), and your degree(s). Only include your graduation date if it is within the last 15 years.
- Include a list of relevant professional development and training courses.