Education. In every resume, you should include a section on your education. Young people are advised to include their dates of attendance or the date they received their degrees. You'll have to give this information when you make a formal application so that the potential employer can check on your credentials. But you don't have to put dates on a resume, and you shouldn't. Unless you earned some spectacular kind of honor in college, say Phi Beta Kappa, simply list the universities and colleges you attended, in most recent to most distant order, along with any certificates or degrees you earned. If you've had short courses and seminars, list them if they're important to the job title shown on your resume. Otherwise, omit them entirely or provide a summary statement, as in the example below.
Numerous short courses and seminars on various phases of general management and biochemical laboratory procedures.
Business Affiliations. This section is included when you write an achievement or professional resume. It is placed immediately after the education section. In it, you simply list the companies you worked for and your job title. (In the professional resume, if you have been working as a consultant, you may head this section "Clients.") Don't state the dates worked. You can include some identifier, such as "a division of subsidiary of a major corporation, and give some idea about the line of business and its location. But if you're trying to get a resume on a single page, then the following format (most recent to distant) will suffice:
Business Affiliations
Omni/Penthouse Publications, Ltd. Director Financial Planning
Senate Bearing Co., Inc. Director Finance/Administration
Dutchess County Government Budget Director/Controller
Savin Corporation Assistant Controller
RCA Corporation Cost & Budget Supervisor
Professional Affiliations. For jobs in which professional certification or membership in professional or trade organizations is a must, this heading should be included. Or you can use a heading called "Other Affiliations," and include business and community organization memberships that show your competence-for instance, president of the chamber of commerce, chairperson of fund raising for the alumni association of your college chairperson of a major committee. The following example shows how these might be listed.
Professional Affiliations
Military Experience. You may choose to include this or not, depending upon your rank and whether or not the experience your military service provided is transferable to civilian life. Ability to bomb the enemy is not necessarily a transferable skill. Ability to fly might be.
Honors, Publications, Presentations, Patents. This heading (or it can be more than one heading) should be included in any resume if it adds to your hire ability. If you're listed in any of the Who's Who books, it's nice to include it. Briefly identify any other honors. Published papers and books also add to stature as do patents granted. Use a telegraphed format for these. List only the names of articles or books, not the dates, the publications or the publisher. (Note: If you include publications, you should also prepare a complete list of these in standard bibliographic form to leave behind with the interviewer if you are asked to do so.) Describe patents in some way (but don't give them esoteric titles). List the organizations before which you made major presentations and include a brief title of your topic.
Technical Expertise or Area of Specialization. This section is always included in a Professional resume. In it are listed the skills and knowledge areas in which you are an expert; you may also include areas in which you have a working knowledge, if you think that would be advantageous. The example below, prepared by a former AT&T Systems Manager, gives an idea of the detail you might include under this heading:
Personal. Most personal questions are no longer the legally valid concern of an employer. You can put a minimum amount of information in this section-or leave it out altogether. Prospective employers don't need to know if you're married, divorced or single (unless being single is a requirement, as it is in some international work where housing isn't available for married employees). How many children you have is none of their concern either, and should not be included, no matter how proud you are of your children. You might want to mention that you're active in civic and community affairs, although mentioning that you're active in your religion can be a deselector. You have to use discretion. You don't want your citations to sound as though you spend too much time away from work on these activities. However, if you are considering a position in education at the secondary or college level, the decision-makers want to know about your extracurricular activities in college. These are still of interest even these long years after the fact, as a pseudo-measure of your participation in the functioning of the system.
If you include a personal section, you should include the phrase "Willing to relocate/travel" or something similar, even if you really don't want a job that will require you to relocate. You don't want to be deselected on the basis of its omission.
