A resume is more than a list of facts about you. It is your first opportunity to make a good impression on prospective employers and tell them what is important about you as a worker. Typically, employers are interested in learning why you might be a good person to have on board. What skills do you have? What experience? What record of success or persistence? The answers to those questions should be easily found on your resume.
2. Suppose I have been working for the last 10 years. All of a sudden I find myself out of work. How do I put together a good resume?
Do an inventory of yourself-what you are good at, what you want to do-and then collect those notes into categories such as education, experience, skills, and achievements. You have the heart of a good resume when you have those things down on paper. Be sure to have your resume professionally typed and reproduced.
3. How much attention does a resume get?
Not as much as you probably imagine. One study showed they got two minutes. Another showed only 45 seconds.
Whichever one is correct, the point is you have to look good in a hurry. The information the reader wants has to be easily found. The goal is to get the prospective employer interested enough in your capabilities to want to interview you.
4. How long should a resume be?
A resume should be only a page or two long in most cases. You need a longer resume only if you are in entertainment, medicine, college teaching or the diplomatic service. In those professions, you tell everything on a resume. In fact, such professions call it a curriculum vitae (Latin for "the course of one's life") instead of a resume.
In some other professions, where it might be important to show the scope of your experience, you can attach lists of what you have done. For example, a writer might put together a standard one- or two-page resume, then attach a list of articles and books published. An engineer might attach a list of projects he or she has worked on.
But remember, most resumes should be short, one or two pages. Almost every employer is going to ask you to fill out an application form, where you can tell everything of any importance.
5. So the resume is like an advertisement for myself?
Yes, in some ways. It's a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point ad. It is the way people begin to judge you before they really know you. You are on display in print, so to speak. You'll want to look your best.
6. How do I choose among the different types of resumes? How do I know which kind to write?
That depends on what is important about you and the type of experience you have. You should choose the type based on what you want to say and which resume will show your skills and experience in the best light.
The old standby, the Chronological resume, is good for almost everyone, but especially for persons who want to show that their work experience has been broad and that they have progressed. On a Chronological resume you might say, for example, that at age 18 you started doing this kind of work, at age 21 you did that kind of work and so on up through the years.
It is a good form to use until you have reached a high level in your particular line of work. Then you should consider switching to something like a Functions resume, an Accomplishments resume or a Special Skills resume.
A Functions resume might be best if you have never had an impressive title. We've all known, probably, the person who virtually did the boss's job but got no credit for it. The Functions resume for Janice Marie Young shows how to handle that. Her title of assistant sales analyst isn't very impressive and isn't mentioned in the description of her work for the department store. The reader sees, though, that she has some important responsibilities. If she had led off with her title, most readers would consciously or unconsciously categorize her as a low-paid clerk. Instead, she emphasized her functions, increasing the likelihood that she will be seen as ready to move up into management.
In the Special Skills resume, you write about the different skills that you have mastered. Maybe you became very good at giving performance and salary reviews to employees, or budgeting, or planning production, or controlling inventory. Maybe you were the best person in the office at getting things done on the phone. Those are all skills that prospective employers might be interested in.
The Accomplishments resume is the Functions resume in the past tense. "Helped bring sales up 72 percent in a period of three years due to a program that I helped devise." Write that way when creating an Accomplishments resume.
