Career Tips: Creating Your Resume

Length
A resume should be long enough to cover important details and accomplishments, but short enough to attract and keep the reader's attention. Only on rare occasions should a resume be more than two pages. If you need more information, then end the resume with "Additional information and references readily available." Academia is the exception to this rule, but in commercial settings, hold to two pages.

Style
There are functional, chronologic, and reverse chronologic.

Functional resumes highlight your skills and accomplishments and work best when you have been doing the same type of work for many years. Start with an objective, then a summary, a section on your education or professional training, follow with a skills or accomplishments section, then end with a job history.

Chronologic resumes are still the most common and easiest to read. Use this format unless you have a need to use another. Start with a well-written objective, then job history or education (education first if you have less than 5 years professional experience), a skills section will finish this nicely.

Reverse Chronologic resumes almost always throw the reader a curve ball. Only use this style when you need to tell a story or when your most applicable experience was early in your career.

Quantify and Qualify
Engage the reader of your resume. Tell a good story with lots of details. When you say that you were responsible for something, describe the size or otherwise qualify the statement.

Examples
Which shows the candidate in the best light?

• Responsible for hiring, supervising, and training the sales force along with sales, loss prevention and merchandising the store.
• Recruited and developed a staff of over 100 in a 100,000 sq. ft. store with $11M in sales. Improved loss prevention by 10%. Won company wide award for store presentation.

Use details to enhance your resume. Don't exaggerate; just provide the facts.

What if my resume makes me look old?
If you would prefer to not disclose your age, document the last 20 years or so, then add a section entitled "Earlier Experience". In this section use a few sentences to highlight any work you did that is not on the resume. You didn't hide anything, but you didn't give anything away unnecessarily. Additionally, list your education, but leave the years off.

Should I use an objective?
Absolutely. I have interviewed thousands of candidates during my career and can tell you the most important question in each of my interviews is "Tell me what is going to be important about your next position."

If there is a reason for you to create a resume, there is an objective. Your objective will come out eventually and if your priorities don't match with the employers, you're not going to get the job anyway. Tell them what you want in the first paragraph of your resume, doing so will expedite the process if you are a fit.

Example
Objective: To apply my 10 years of government related sales management experience to a position as a Director of Business Development with an aggressive Government Services Provider.

This will keep you from getting some calls, and you can thank me for it. Now all the foodservice companies in Baltimore won't call you, but you can bet you will attract the attention of the government services companies.

I have worked for companies no one has heard of.
Always assume the reader never heard of your employers. Every company does at least one thing well. Take this opportunity to tell the reader. Use this in your description.

Example
Director of Recruiting

Continental Search & Outplacement, Inc.,
Baltimore, MD
1996- Present
CS&O is a boutique recruiting firm specializing in hard-to-fill assignments.

Executive Recruiter
Futures Personnel Services, Inc.,
Towson, MD
1991-1996
Futures was an established employment agency and an Inc. 500 award winner.

In the example the reader has the (accurate) impression that the candidate worked for two first-rate organizations instead of two small businesses that would be unknown to most people.

Most important tips

• Tell how you positively impacted the organization you were with, list accomplishments, awards, quantify & qualify. Don't list a job description.
• Explain what you actually did in terms anyone could understand. The use of acronyms, heavy use of technical jargon may be impressive to the person that will hire you, but a recruiter's assistant, researcher, or worse yet, a Human Resources intern might be the first person in the recruiting chain to read your resume. If they don't understand that you are a fit, no one else will ever see your credentials.
• Tell the truth, but do it in good taste. Liars get caught and fired.
• Leaving something off your resume, (like a short time with a lousy employer), is ok if you describe your JOB HISTORY as CAREER HIGHLIGHTS and use years as time markers and not months. Tell the story when you are interviewing, hiring managers will be more understanding face to face. It is never ok to leave a job off your employment application.
• If there might be any question of your citizenship or clearance status, then list it in the first portion of the resume or at the very end. If you are on a VISA, put it on your resume, it simply saves time getting to the information. It does not help you get the job.
• If your name might be considered male or female, (like Sandy or Jean) consider putting Mr. or Ms. in front of your first name. This has nothing to do with sexual discrimination; it is simple courtesy.
• Remember to put your contact information on the resume and include a professional sounding email. If your email address could be considered offensive, silly or hard to remember, get a yahoo or hotmail account with a more appropriate address.
• Keep these things off your resume:
  -Religious status, (unless applying for a job with a religious
  organization and you think it will help).
  -Marital status, (it is no one's business and organizations don't want to know)
  -Race
  -Date of birth
  -Ages of your children