If you could look through a pile of resumes on any employer's desk, what would you discover? You'd find (even without reading a single word on a single resume) that most resumes have no class.
They're on cheap white paper.
Or they're handwritten.
Or they're done on an ordinary typewriter.
Or they're badly reproduced.
Do you want to be ordinary? To be a carbon copy? Of course not!
Again, put yourself in the reader's place. Think about all those other resumes, and convince yourself that yours has to be so classy that it will be number one in any stack.
You can't see your competition-can't tell who you are up against-but you know that you have to be number one. Number two loses when there's only one job!
When you have worked through to the final draft of your resume (carefully worded, edited, shortened, containing action verbs, results, and accomplishments), you have to consider your resume's final form.
Reproducing Your Resume
Now that you have your resume in its final (and perfect) form, you are ready to have it reproduced.
Usually, you will want to have a quantity of resumes, not just one or two. Even if you have prepared your resume for one specific use or person or organization, you may want to keep extras for your personal file. Or, you may need another copy before your resume has become outdated.
The cost of reproducing your resume will vary according to the method you select, where you live, and how many copies you desire.
In most cases, you will prepare a final draft or a camera-ready copy, from which any quantity may be reproduced.
If you have access to a computer, word processor, or to an electronic typewriter with memory, you may be able to keep your entire resume on disk or in other storage media for later use whenever you need a copy.
But most people will need to prepare the final perfect copy and have it reproduced in a quantity reasonable for near-term use. For the average job hunter, this would be 50 to 500 copies.
No matter which method you choose to reproduce your resume, you will need to prepare a final, error-free, fully-proofread Master Copy for reproduction.
You now need to select two things: the type style, also called the typeface or font you prefer, and the method you will use to produce your final copy.
Typefaces
Thousands of different typefaces exist throughout the world. Unless you are associated with the graphic arts or advertising industries, you may not have noticed the differences among them.
For our purposes, I will divide them into just two groups: serif and sans serif typefaces.
Each typeface, of course, usually contains both uppercase (capital) and lowercase (small) letters. Serif typefaces have two important features that sans serif typefaces do not:
- Serif typefaces have small appendages, "decorative doo-dads" on the ends, tops, or bottoms of each letter.
- Serif typefaces have different thicknesses, as you can see in the example shown here. Each letter is both thick and thin, in different places. Here is an example of a serif typeface:
- This combination of thick, then thin, makes letters that are easier to read, easier to scan quickly, and easier on the eyes than sans serif typefaces.
- Sans serif typefaces, which may appear to be cleaner or less cluttered, are much more difficult to read. The following example is identical to the one above except for the typeface.
- Mixing typefaces gives your resume a cluttered appearance and makes it more difficult to read.
- Your resume will look as though you are writing a letter demanding ransom. That is not the effect you want to have.
The identical lines of type are printed in various serif and sans serif typefaces, in the easy-to-read column format. Compare for yourself and see which you prefer for readability.
Make your Resume First Class
Your final copy must be typed on a top-quality sheet of bright white paper. It should be a paper on which the black typeface shows up well, with good contrast between black and white.
If you use a typewriter for your final resume copy, it should be an office-quality machine, one which uses a carbon ribbon cartridge.
Old-fashioned typewriters (such as the ones many of us have in our homes) use felt or fabric ribbons. These ribbons had the advantage of lasting for months, or even years, but with each succeeding winding or use, the ribbon lost some degree of intensity. By the time you had used it several times, the contrast had diminished to poor.
Newer machines use cartridge ribbons, almost all of which are carbon ribbons or film ribbons. The older types are thick; the newer ones are thin, much like the tape in audio or video cassettes. They are wound onto the spool and then packed in cartridges, which slip easily onto your electronic typewriter or computer spindle.
Each impression made by a carbon ribbon cartridge is clean and crisp, with excellent contrast between the black letters and the white paper. Perhaps you are one of the lucky people who have access to a word processor, personal computer or a large main frame computer.
But what counts is that you must have a letter-quality printer. If it is a daisy-wheel or similar printer, it must have a carbon ribbon cartridge.
A "near letter-quality" or a dot-matrix printer is not acceptable.
Laser and ink-jet printers, of course, are usually excellent. Generally, laser printers also provide proportional-spacing typefaces. These allocate more space for the letter "M," for instance, than they would for the letter "I" because the "M" is much wider.
Non-proportional-spacing machines give an "I" the same amount of space as an "M," and this detracts from the readability and appearance of the words.
