This resume preparation article, prepared especially for women, is a unique step-by-step guide. It will help you create an effective resume that can open doors to the interviews you want.
To find out just how important a good resume is, we talked to employers across the country. The remarks of the Personnel Director of a medium-sized mid western publishing firm are typical of the comments we heard:
Whenever I advertise to fill a good job, I'm inundated with resumes. I'd like to read them all, but frankly, I don't have the time. Sometimes my assistant spends hours just sorting them into piles those I should definitely read, borderline cases, and resumes which will get immediate form rejections. You'd be amazed at how many qualified people never make it past my assistant's desk because their resumes are sloppy or unclear.
I think it's particularly important for a woman to have a well-written resume. When a woman is competing for a job, she's often placed under a special magnifying glass. Her qualifications are closely scrutinized and assessed particularly where a management-level job is at stake. She's got to come across as being very professional or she'll have trouble overcoming some of the negative expectations.
Unfortunately, far too many women just don't know how to write a good resume. They haven't learned how to play up their achievements the way men do. Or they omit valuable work experience because it was work that they didn't get paid for. Very few women know how to turn their skills and personal experiences into something that an employer can interpret well.
Some other complaints about resumes that we heard from employers were:
- "So many of the ones I see are sloppy and hastily prepared not the kind of person you'd want to hire."
- "The content is vague and confusing. Applicants have no idea what kinds of jobs they're looking for."
- "Skills and accomplishments are not stressed."
- "There is so much irrelevant information that it is hard to find the important points."
- "The writing style is unclear and hard to follow."
- "Many are just visually unappealing; you can't read them."
Before You Begin
When it comes to writing a resume, many people simply grab the nearest pencil, pen, or typewriter, pick up some paper, start at the upper left corner with name and address, and then describe in a rather hasty and unplanned fashion as much as they can about themselves. Others stare for hours at a blank sheet of paper and finally despair of finding anything "meaningful" to say at all.
Even if you've written resumes before, follow our step-by-step approach. Start by defining your job targets, and then progress through a variety of stages until you have a resume that will attract an employer's interest. Because we want you to get the maximum value out of this article, we strongly urge you to stick with it and not skip any of the steps along the way. There's a lot of valuable information here that will make the difference between a rejected resume and one that gets you what you want. In short, what we've done is to put together everything you will need to create the resume that presents you in the strongest light.
The Resume What It Is and Isn't
Let's start with what a resume isn't. It's not your autobiography or your memoirs. It's not a five-page description of everything you've ever done or been involved in. And it's not just a short bare-bones outline of your work experience or a set of sparse descriptions of the jobs you've held.
So what is a resume? It's something you probably never thought it was an advertisement. That's right. It's an advertisement for you a well-written, crisply prepared document that persuasively shows what you have to "sell" to an employer.
And, like all ads, it has a specific objective to accomplish. Very simply: The primary purpose of a resume is to get you its author interviews with the employers you want to see.
Since we're talking about advertising, let's look at the competition. In case you didn't already know, it's fierce! There are thousands of job applicants out there, and they all have resumes. Many people are after the same jobs you are. The inevitable result is that only the really good resumes get the attention of potential employers.
We'd like you to get a sense of the challenge involved in making your resume stand out from the pack. Begin by looking at what you have to work with a blank piece of paper.
Now, suppose someone said that in 250 words or less you had to capture the essence of your work qualifications on that blank paper. Think about it for a moment. Do you know how to make that sheet of paper come alive so that it conveys a positive message about your skills, experience, and accomplishments? Do you know how to turn that blank paper into an invitation for an interview with the employer of your choice?
