How to Write a Powerful Resume
The resume is a simple, well-organized profile of your qualifications. Its purpose is to organize relevant facts about you in a written presentation. It should sell the employer the idea of giving you an interview. Interviews get jobs; resumes get interviews. Everything in your resume should provide employers with reasons to want to interview you.
Thus, the resume should contain brief but sufficient information to tell a prospective employer:
- What you can do
- What you have done
- What you know
- Who you are
- What kind of job you would like
Header
Don’t forget your contact information. List your full name, address, phone number(s), and Email address. And above all, be absolutely sure it’s correct and up-to-date at all times. If you need to update anything, make corrections in advance of your submission. Do not hand-write corrections or updates under any circumstances!
Summary or Career Objective
It would be wise to stay away from objectives as they can limit your scope of opportunities. Instead, work at developing a summary of your experience. Your summary should be no more than one or two sentences. It is most effective to customize the summary to suit the demands of a specific opportunity. Be sure to match your skills, experience and education to their needs. Keep in mind to be honest at all times.
Education
List your most recent education first and work backward. List your degree, major, minor, dates of attendance, name of school. Also list your GPA if it is a 3.0 or higher. Include high school information only if you have no college or university credit.
Work Experience
List your experience, chronologically, with your most recent job first. Include the employer’s name, city and state, along with dates of employment. List your job title. Outline your job duties and accomplishments in concise descriptions.
Skills & Expertise
Be sure to list your technical and computer skills. List programming languages, software programs and operating systems you’ve used as well as certifications you have earned. Also be sure to highlight “soft skills” like foreign languages.
References
You don’t need to waste valuable space on references. Most employers will ask for them later. However, if you need to fill an empty space at the bottom of your page, go ahead and put “Excellent references are available upon request.” Prepare a separate sheet listing three to five professional references.
