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The Most Essential Ingredients of Your Resume

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Summary: Resume is made of many different parts and each part is equally important starting from the content to the formatting of it. Some essential parts like objective, job titles, contact details are something that you just can't ignore and you have to include them.

Job Objective

In developing your resume, your job target must be clearly in your mind. Major changes in your target may require different resumes. Minor changes will not.



With your target in mind, go through the accomplishment statements you developed. Select those that support your job objective, and leave out those that do not support it.

If the accomplishments that best support your objective occurred a long time in the past, select excerpts from them and put the excerpts in your summary. This will make it easier for the reader to see that you have had that experience.

Have your target clearly in mind before you develop your resume but don't put it on your resume. Your resume can include you or exclude you from the hiring process. A "job objective" makes it seem as if you want a specific position. Even if you are open to other positions, it may seem that you are not. On the other hand, if you know exactly what you want, and if there are plenty of jobs with the title you are going after, then perhaps you should put a job objective on your resume.

Career changers are often not sure what they want to do. But you need a resume just to talk with people. Develop a resume and use it to "test market" yourself to find out if your target market thinks you have a chance. A more focused, polished resume" will grow out of this process.

Your Summary Statement

The position statement you developed becomes the summary statement in your resume. It sets the tone and highlights the theme the threads that bind your accomplishments. Your summary statement describes what makes you qualified and yet different from others who may be aiming for the same position.

The summary statement goes at the top of your resume, after your name, address, and phone number. It brings all your accomplishments together. If in your summary statement you want to say that you are a financial wizard, your accomplishment statements must support this.

Consider underlining what you want the reader to see. Remember, the reader scans the underlined parts which make the resume easier to read and then reads the rest of the summary. When highlighting is used throughout the resume, the reader will tend to focus on those areas first. If underlining makes you uncomfortable, don't use it. But it is very effective.

The Format

Your resume should be attention getting in an understated way, and readable. Lines of type that go clear across the page from one margin to the other are difficult to read. Use bulleted accomplishments to break up the text.

Your resume should be as long as it has to be, and no longer. Cut and cut until you cannot cut any more. You do not care if anyone ever reads your entire resume; he probably won't read it all, whether it is two pages long or five. You want him simply to stop at your resume and spend more than ten seconds on it, so perhaps he will call you in.

My own resume happens to be three to four pages long I feel it has to be to say what I want in the way I want to say it. I could cram it into two pages but instead I make it attractive and readable, and use as many pages as necessary.

I get lots of interviews, even though interviewers almost invariably tell me that my resume is too long. One thing everyone knows about job hunting is that a resume should be no longer than two pages. Years ago, that made sense. People stayed in one job or one company for a very long time. But now people change jobs more often, and a simple listing of jobs can sometimes take an entire page. Many people mistakenly think a shorter resume is more likely to be read, so they force a lot of information into one completely unreadable page. It is better to have a longer resume that is scannable and readable. But remember, no matter how long or short your resume is, the average reader will look at it for only ten seconds.

Phone

List a daytime phone number. If you have an answering machine, you can list the number as "213 555 1212 (message)"; interviewers will then expect to leave a message but not talk to you. Do the same if you use the number of a relative who is taking messages for you. Or consider using an answering service, which can be reasonably priced. By doing so, you can call for your messages and not worry about missing them. Within reasonable limits the service can be instructed to receive your messages in a manner calculated to enhance your campaign.

Job Titles

You must be honest in stating your job title, and sometimes that means not using the title your company gave you. Use a title that accurately reflects the job you held one commonly understood outside your company. For example, if your company calls you a "Programmer C," is that a high level programmer or a low level one? It would be better to call yourself a junior programmer or a senior programmer titles that make more sense to the outside world.

I had a client whose job title was "marketing representative," yet what she did was market analysis. Since she was applying for positions in market analysis, the title was holding her back and it was also misleading: until she agreed to change her title and make it more honest, readers thought she was in sales.

Reporting Relationships, Company Descriptions

Sometimes your reporting relationship gives a good indication of your level of responsibility. If it helps, put it in. For example, you could say, "report directly to the president."

It may help to put in parentheses what your company does. For example: "Complex, Inc. (a computer software company)." Again, if it helps, put it in.
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