Resume
What to Include on Your Resume: A Complete Guide
What Is a Resume, and Why It’s Your Most Powerful Career Tool
A resume is a concise, one, to two, page document that presents your professional identity: your career goals, work experience, achievements, education, and relevant skills.
It opens with your name and contact information, followed by key sections such as a career objective, professional summary, work history, education, and, when applicable, certifications, volunteer work, or notable accomplishments.
Your career objective should be brief (one or two sentences) and clearly state your professional direction. The professional summary should highlight your most relevant qualifications and how they align with the job you’re seeking, keeping it focused, factual, and free of personal details like age, marital status, or ethnicity.
List your professional experience in reverse chronological order, including employer names, locations (city and state), job titles, dates of employment, and key responsibilities, emphasizing duties that relate directly to your target role. Your education section should feature degrees, institutions, graduation dates, and any certifications or coursework pertinent to the position.
Only include achievements, publications, or interests if they add professional value. References are typically provided only upon request, and it’s no longer necessary (or recommended) to write “References available upon request,” as this is assumed.
In today’s digital and highly competitive job market, your resume is often your first, and sometimes only, chance to make an impression. It functions as your personal sales pitch, showcasing your strengths and setting you apart from other candidates. A strong resume is clean, error-free, and professionally formatted using standard fonts like Arial or Times New Roman. Avoid excessive styling, and ensure it’s equally effective on screen and in print.
Ultimately, your resume isn’t just a record of your past, it’s a strategic tool that can open doors to interviews, opportunities, and career advancement. Investing time, care, and attention into crafting it can mean the difference between being overlooked and landing your dream job.
Effective Tips And Cover Letter Writing
Resume: Employers are forever on the lookout for the resume that jumps out at them. Not in terms of being fancy and pretty to look at. Employers are looking to be impressed! Reading your resume, they want to be able to feel that YOU are the right candidate for the job. They want to be able to do this before ever setting eyes on you! Tall order, right? You betcha it is! The very first step in landing that ideal job is to write an ideal resume and cover letter. Without those two most primary of introductions, there most likely won’t be a first interview! Taking That First Important Step. Your resume places you in the front lines when job hunting. It becomes your calling card. It is not about compelling drama or clever prose; it’s a few simple pages, expertly written, containing information that is all about you. Your resume will either place you front and center where all the good jobs are or it will not -- there is no middle ground.
It’s Now or Never For the serious job seeker, the tips on resume writing and cover letters on this website will become as a trusted friend. This will be your personal and comprehensive guide to everything you could ever hope to know about conquering the never ending “resume and cover letter” paper trail. Your resume writing skills will become well honed and your resume will be fine tuned. You will learn to sell yourself with simple, yet, effective words. Your resume will not be relegated to the bottom of any pile -- it will be placed where it belongs....at the very top! You will write a resume that will rival any resume written by a top-notch professional writer, and you will do this in complete confidence.
EFFECTIVE RESUME AND COVER LETTER WRITING To begin, make a decision to discard any former knowledge learned about the “rules” of resume and cover letter writing. People commonly become stuck in “bad” writing habits from a time gone by. It is almost a certainty that since you last wrote your resume, much has been learned and even more has been changed. This is as it should be, for everyday, very creative people are adding to the resume and cover letter writing arsenal.
The Basics For years, we have been told that to be most effective, a resume should be only one page. This just does not apply any longer! Today’s resume is creative and unique. Aside from the most essential and key elements, a resume should reflect the personality and need of the job seeker and not be some cookie cutter rendition of what is “acceptable and expected.” Standards in resumes and cover letters have changed dramatically, but, only so far as the job seeker has the creative expression and know-how to pull it off! Therein lies the difference.
Everyday, employers read all of the standard resumes. They are required to go through each and every one! But, which one will catch their eye? Formatting in resumes and cover letters has expanded, too. When you consider that your resume will be your own, personalized form of marketing yourself -- this lends itself to all manner of unique communication and expression. Again, so long as the essential elements are included in each resume and cover letter, you are at complete liberty to make certain that your resume will impress and with a bang! Just how, exactly, does one do this? First of all, learn about the most basic principles involved in writing a highly effective resume and cover letter. Once you have this down, the creative expression can begin! Your most basic purpose in writing your resume and cover letter will be to be noticed among the many. You want to stand out as not just a good candidate but as “the” candidate just fitting for the job you want.
THE PURPOSE OF YOUR RESUME Your resume is an important tool that communicates all about YOU. When it does the job right, you win an interview. Your resume doesn't simply provide a prospective employer with your work history. It speaks loud and clear that you have the credentials needed to be a complete success in this new position or career. Your resume will attract immediate attention. The reader will want to pick it up and read it top to bottom. Interest will be stimulated. An interview will be arranged.
Your resume will contain:
- Your contact information, i.e. name, address, phone, email address, website address.
- A defined job objective.
- A work history.
- Educational history.
- Affiliations.
- References.
- Your resume will be written using professional grade printing and paper.
RESUME PRESENTATION IS KEY An employer can have hundreds of boring resumes to pour through. This means when something catches the eye, it must really pop out! Your resume must impress within the first important seconds or it will not impress at all. Employers will quickly scan all resumes and then grab for those that catch their eye best. To write a really effective resume, you will use powerful statements that will impress.
This is very important, but, you do not want to oversell! There is a very fine line here and you will learn all about it. Above all, you will make honest statements about yourself. They will be strong statements and 100% true, or they will not be effective at all. Just as you would sell any product that you believe strongly in, you will learn to sell the product that is you! Once you have learned to do this, you will find that you will get a better response from a prospective employer than other prospects do and even those with better credentials. It is all in how you market your product!
WOW THE EMPLOYER First of all, who are you writing this resume for? Your prospective employer will be the one who oversees the day to day operations of the company you want to join. They make the hiring decisions and they are entirely invested in ensuring that you are the right one for the job. This person will care about whether or not you can do a good job for that company and so this is the one you are writing your resume for. You want to be sure that you are the right candidate for the job. You want to be sure you know everything there is to know about this company. You want to understand exactly, which qualities are needed to be the right candidate for this job. You want to be sure you are not a good candidate for this job, but, that you are the best candidate for this job.
Time to start writing This is the time to put pen to paper and to lay out clearly what your prospective employer is looking for in an ideal candidate. You need to be able to solidify what it is that you bring to the table, even before you begin. Jot down every fine point about your training and experience, your unique characteristics, special talents, even your attitude -- everything that shows you most qualified for the job you seek. If you are new to the job market, be creative and draw on your upbringing, life exposure and anything that can account for your unique experience and qualities. You will begin to be able to connect the dots during this process. Simple statements will turn into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. Keep this information in a safe place. You will use it later to be incorporated into your finished product.
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