Resume Production

The first impression is vital. Ever noticed the importance of clothes in sizing somebody up. The clothing on your resume will make that first, vital impression-not its content or its writing style, but its appearance, its clothing. But appearance is only partially determined by format. Suppose you write a terrific resume, have a dynamite writing style, and a format that would win an award for superlative graphic design. And suppose you printed that resume on a brown paper bag, cheap onionskin, or lime green paper with pink borders, or even just plain old photo-copy paper. Another element of appearance enters the picture: production.

When you first meet someone, two basic senses are at work: sight and sound. But if you shake that person's hand, another sense comes into play: touch. Your resume will be seen but not heard. It will, however, be touched. The employment manager will pick it up. Thus, when you produce your resume, you must be concerned with two senses: sight and touch. To be properly dressed your resume must have the right look and the right feel.

Picture your resume sitting in a pile of other resumes. Imagine that the employment manager just finished reviewing the resume right above yours in the pile. Yours is next. She picks it up, feels it, and quickly looks at it. In those first few seconds only two senses are at work: sight and touch. Does an impression begin to form in her mind? You bet it does, just as an impression of a person begins to form immediately upon that first introduction, that first hello, that first handshake.



Most of the resumes in that pile wear blue jeans or com bat boots. Does yours? Even if it's properly written, structured, and formatted, it still might not be properly dressed. It must be properly produced before it can effectively respond to and control those first two senses of sight and touch.

The Production Decision

When you produce your resume, you've got to make a decision: How to produce it.

There are four ways you can produce your resume: typing, typesetting, word processing, and desktop publishing. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

• Typing Your Resume.

If you plan to type your resume yourself, be careful. Be certain you have a top-notch typewriter, one that makes the image by striking a carbon (not a cloth) ribbon. Be sure it has a correcting feature enabling you to strike out any mistakes (don't use correction fluid to correct mistakes; no matter how hard you try, the mistakes will still show on your copies). Make sure your underline character produces truly straight underscoring rather than a series of jagged lines. Be prepared to forego any boldfaced emphasis on your resume, as it is extremely difficult to produce on an ordinary typewriter. And finally, be ready to retype the resume many times, because you're likely to end with either too little or too much space at the bottom of the page.

In a word, don't type your resume. Prepare to enter the twentieth century and use modem word processing or desktop publishing technology, if only because these methods give you an electronic file that can be easily revised. If you don't know anything about word processing or desktop publishing, then let a pro do it.

• Typesetting Your Resume.

Typesetting these days is done by computer technology but, as we will explain, is generally more awkward and old-fashioned than other forms of creating your resume via computer. A typesetting machine actually photo graphs images of letters in a variety of fonts to produce a sheet of type. That type is then pasted up and positioned to produce camera-ready copy. The type you see in some books is still typeset in this fashion. Typeset looks better than typewritten, but should you use it on your resume? Possibly yes, but probably no, especially if you have access to either word processing or desktop publishing technology.

The primary problems with typeset resumes are cost and inconvenience. Taking your resume to a typesetter or a resume service using typesetting can cost you on the order of seventy-five to one hundred fifty dollars for the typesetting and twenty-five or so copies. Once you've got your resume typeset, it can be very difficult and costly to get it revised.

• Word Processing or Desktop Publishing Your Resume.

These days, the only way to go is to use modem word processing, or its more powerful cousins, the desktop page layout programs, to produce your resume. Because people are becoming accustomed to receiving word-processed, rather than typewritten, correspondence, word-processed resumes in effect look just as personal as typewritten resumes. The word-processed resume also can look typeset, which therefore looks expensive. The word-processed resume can be easily and inexpensively revised, and it can be prepared and tailored for a specific prospective employer. With a word processor you can experiment with different formats, you can use bold type, you can produce your text with a right-justified margin, you can make revisions and correct mistakes, and you can store your resume for future revision.

If you word process your resume, be careful when you select a printer. Make certain the equipment produces a truly sharp image. Take a careful look at the underlining feature to be sure it produces a straight and not a jagged line. Never print out your resume on a dot matrix printer. At least it must be an impact printer striking a carbon ribbon. Preferably it should be a laser printer with a resolution of 300 dots per inch.

You may also want to produce your resume using a desktop-formatting or page-layout program, such as PageMaker, Ventura, or Quark XPress. Although most word-processing programs now include the basic formatting features you'll need for your resume, the formatting programs can offer you a wider range of options and greater flexibility in producing the exact look you want.

You can also load the text of your resume from a word-processing file into a formatting program for final production. Desktop publishing gives you another printing option as well, beyond the laser printer. If you wish, you can take your page layout file to a publishing service bureau to have it printed out so that the type is as sharp and black as typesetting-1270 dots per inch, for example, rather than the 300 dots per inch generated by most laser printers. Because this procedure is often done through a machine called a Linotronic, it is often referred to as having your type lino'd. Although the difference between laser print and lino is readily discernible to publishing professionals, it's rather subtle to most people, so that laser printing is quite acceptable. Lino or typeset quality may be a reasonable option for people circulating their resumes in the design and communications fields, but even here laser-printed resumes are the rule, because of their convenience. The cost of lino is reasonable-five to fifteen dollars a page, so that a two-page typeset-quality resume ready for photocopying will cost less than thirty dollars-yet the bother and repeated expense of going to a service bureau every time you need to revise your resume probably isn't justified by the subtle difference in type.

• Word Processing It Yourself.

Many people these days know how to use word processing software programs such as WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, WordStar, MacWrite, and IBM Display Write. Unfortunately, many people do not know the full extent of the word processor's powers. They don't know how to set proper margins, select the proper fonts, produce bullets or other dingbats, and right justify lines, produce indentations, and so on. Turned loose with a word processor, many people will produce some absolutely awful resumes (just ask the recruiters who have to review them).

To summarize, we believe the word-processed or desktop published resume provides the best results. If you do type your resume, get it done by a professional. If you have your resume typeset, be sure you make the font and formatting decisions based on what you've learned in this article. If you take your resume to someone else for word processing or desktop publishing, the same caution applies. Be sure to specify not only font but also type size-or make it clear in advance that you will be reviewing the first draft and specifying any changes you want. Be sure you control the types of graphic emphasis employed. Resumes left solely to the discretion of a typesetter or even a desktop publishing designer can end up looking like used-car commercials, complete with balloons and dancing bears.