This article was prompted by my review of a résumé for a friend of mine.
While resume’ remains the most important document for potential job seekers, it is often times a victim of lackadaisical attitude towards organization, grammar and thought. To correct this malaise, I offer here below general guidelines along with examples for writing a successful résumé for experienced professionals in technical fields. Most of the ideas I mention can be applied to other kind of résumés.
The word résumé comes from the Middle French word résumér, which means “to summarize”. Writing a résumé involves a certain kind of summarization – a targeted pithy easy-to-read summarization of only the pertinent career highlights. Résumé, in short, is written for a particular job in a particular company. One should not go about writing a general purpose résumé. Once you are clear about the idea that résumé is a targeted summarization – a pitch or spiel directed towards the hiring manager of a particular organization advertising for a particular job, you would have a better idea about what kind of details to include and how to organize those details. The organization and the form of a résumé will differ depending on whether the résumé is being emailed or printed or submitted to a company database. More on this later.
Modern résumés should give the person reading your contact information, a summary of your skills, relevant job experience with a bulleted list of mostly pertinent details (if you are switching fields), and a summary of your education.
Résumés for experienced professional should start with a bulleted summarization of professional experience and skills. The summarization should be keyword heavy – keywords will vary according to job and industry – but still should come across as articulate and interesting.
Here’s a sample summarization for a UI designer:
- Three years of progressive industry experience in developing and designing user interface for web and desktop applications.
- Experienced in conducting user interface studies with focus groups, analyzing user needs and preferences, researching information hierarchy and information flows.
- Dexterous in rapid prototyping using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, storyboarding, creating mock-ups, developing information architecture.
- Excellent communication skills including ability to deliver information in a clear and articulate manner befitting audience profile; ability to present in an interesting, and persuasive manner.
*Graphic designers and web developers may choose to provide a link to their portfolio right after the summarization. If you are providing links to your website – make sure that all the links work and that it the material is professionally presented and doesn’t link to your page on your dog or your buddy Mike’s stories about his drinking escapades.
Experienced professionals should next mention pertinent professional experience in reverse chronological order. In providing details about your job, mention key projects and accomplishments at the job along with the key technical skills/ programs that you used. For example, here’s a sample job summary for a web developer position
- Developed a web-based language learning application using Flash, XML, Oracle, and Perl. The application allows instructors to create new quizzes, and surveys, lets students record their responses to the questions and provides instructional staff with a way to leave written and voice feedback for students.
- Created a complimentary module to the above application for secure authentication using Perl and PGP.
- Created a secure job management tool using Perl, JavaScript, and Oracle. The management tool helps manage the assignment and track the completion of jobs given to creative services for production.
Next, you may want to provide a summary of your education including any certification courses that you achieved. In case a certification is required or in case it is a valuable related certification that will be valued by prospective employers- mention it in your summarization at the top.
Volunteer Experience sections are optional and should only be included if they showcase your leadership ability or some other facet that goes under/unmentioned in your resume’. For example:
- Managed a team of fifteen volunteers in charge of soliciting donations from local stores for the homeless kitchen.
- As a member of the student council, I worked with the school administration to help create a supplementary fund for impoverished students.
Organization and Presentation –
- If submitting your resume’ to an online database, make the top of your resume’ keyword heavy
- If submitting to some hiring manager via email – spend some time in refining the visual aesthetics and making the résumé easy to read.
- Create a text only format by saving Word files are text only with line breaks and then going in and manually replacing things so that everything looks clear.
- Be clutter free. Don’t let the sentences drag on to the end of the sheet. Provide generous margins.
- Tweak line spacing where applicable to separate section headings and to provide a better reading experience.
Aside from the above, some general comments –
- Keep the “tense” in bulleted lists. For example
- Accomplished this
- Completed that
- Analyzed something
- Revise your work
- Use action words and active voice. You did something rather than something was done by you.
Get to work now and good luck!