Testing and Revising Your Resume

A resume is ineffective unless it's well presented. It should be imaginatively conceived. It should advertise what you have to sell. Put yourself Put your emotions to bed. Look at your resume with fresh eyes:

1. Does the thumbnail sketch mirror the experience shown in the rest of the resume? Do the achievements or experience substantiate each assertion included in the thumbnail?
   
2. Does the experience section read smoothly, continuously and logically? Or do some of the statements seem out of context, as though they belong some other place? Irrelevant to the theme of the resume as a whole? Too technical, too precise or, conversely, too general and imprecise?
   
3. Does the person behind the resume become increasingly clear as you read? Or is the image blurred from time to time by statements that don't seem to fit the rest of the picture?
   
   
   
4. After you read the resume, do you have a single, clear picture of you as a person? Is this the image of someone you'd like to meet?
   
5. Did your resume meet the acid test? Is it apt to open doors?
   

Evaluating Different Parts of the Resume

Now, come back and look at each part of your resume by itself. Leave the beginning-the thumbnail sketch-until after you've evaluated the other sections of the resume.

Achievement Resume, Begin by reviewing the Selected Achievements section. Evaluate each statement in the section, using the following criteria as a checklist:

1. Do your accomplishment statements begin with action words? Does each statement include the result? Do the results include measurements of success (dollars, time, qualifying adjectives, percentages, other numerical values)?
   
2. Does each statement list only an accomplishment and a related result? If you've included more than one accomplishment in a statement, consider splitting it into two or more accomplishments. Or use subdivisions under the main statement to show that a single activity resulted in multiple accomplishments and results.
   
3. Have you written the statements in forceful, simple language? Or do they contain jargon, technical words or abbreviations that might not be universally understood?
   
4. What about the order of the accomplishments? Do you have a strong accomplishment at the end of the section as well as at the beginning? (Some knowledgeable recruiters read achievement resumes from bottom to top because they believe applicants put their lesser achievements at the end.) The usual order is to put the best achievement first, the next-best second, the third-best last and distribute the others evenly in between.
   
5. Do you have too many or too few accomplishments? Somewhere between five and eight is about right. If you have more solid accomplishments than these, you may want to write different resumes emphasizing different aspects of the job. (Whatever you do, don't throw away any good accomplishment statements. Save them in your notebook for possible reuse in writing cover letters or letter resumes.)
   
6. Do your achievement statements match the type of position and the industry for which you will be applying? Example: A programming achievement is inappropriate if you will be applying to manage an information system. An accomplishment related to installing/directing the operation of a management information system would be appropriate.
   

After you've finished the Selected Achievements section, go on to review the other sections, which are similar for most kinds of resumes. (Turn forward a couple of pages to find how to evaluate these sections.)

Chronological Resume. Begin by reviewing the section you titled Background and Experience, Relevant Experience or Experience.

1. Are your positions listed in reverse chronological order?
   
2. Did you write the descriptions of your duties, responsibilities and functions of your last position in the present tense? (Even when you're not working, you want to imply that you are. Using the present tense is not deceitful. For all practical purposes, that's still what you are.)
   
3. Have you described the duties, responsibilities and functions for other positions you had in the past tense?
   
4. Have you described your experience in short sentences? (Please, no more than a line, or at most two for a single sentence.) Have you used simple, forceful language? Does each statement begin with a strong verb? Do the statements show that you managed, delegated, planned, organized, developed or otherwise controlled your job? Or do your statements make your performance sound passive and low level? (You assisted, helped, participated in, represented, handled.) Or worse yet, did you use nouns to describe your duties and responsibilities rather than strong active verbs?
   
5. Does your record show increasingly higher-level duties and responsibilities?
   
6. Are the descriptions of the most recent positions longer than those for earlier positions? (Most recent positions could have up to five or six lines of description, although three or four lines is better. Earlier positions should be described in no more than two or three lines of print.)
   
7. What about the order of the functions, duties or responsibilities within a statement about a position? Did you put the most important aspects of the job first, and the less important or less time-consuming aspects later?
   
8. Did you include descriptions for only the last 15 or 20 years? (If your entire working life was with one company, you may include it all. Otherwise, if you have worked longer than 20 years or so, only include the earlier years if you did something during those years that is important to explain your qualifications for the current job title.