Life Skills - Resume writing

[GroG]

Hello fellow businesspeople! I figured I'd try for something a little different here - something to help you in the business world. Even if you are in high school, just started college, or just working a job and not going to school, having a current resume is important.

I'm currently graduating from college and interviewing at jobs. So I was thinking, what better time to help out my fellow members than when I have the knowledge fresh in my head.

For starters, I'll post my resume - feel free to critique it if you wish. When you are ready, post yours and we shall all have a go at yours as well. If you are just starting it, that's fine - me and anyone else interested will give you pointers to get going.

Remember, getting it started is the hard part. Then, each semester as you take the classes you need in your degree program or gain skills at work you can use, just add them. I recommend saving your resume using a date system so you have old resumes too, if needed. My wife even has multiple resumes so she can use different ones to different job types (Law, Human Resources, Management, etc.)

Anyways, here's mine to get started. Let's see yours!

[SolidSamurai]

I'm almost sure, pretty sure in fact, that most of the people on these boards are too embarrassed to post their own resumes. That includes me. :P

So uh... you might not see as much thread activity as you might of hoped for.

[Black.Ice]

Great idea for a thread!

I started making reviews and doing a harsh critique but decided against posting a revised document because I was changing it into my style, which isn't really necessary. Instead, t I'll summarize the changes here.

I'm no expert, but I've worked with a handful of HR people and talked to them. I even interviewed people a couple of times, so I have a bit of experience, but not that much. Take what I say with a grain of salt.

Layout: Overall the layout is great. Simple and Elegant and easy to get the required information. However, it's lacking flavor. Your resume shouldn't be bright and showy, but it shouldn't be dull. Yours isn't dull, but it could use a little more style. Change the headers around a bit, use different fonts, and different colors if you have access to a color printer.

Objective: It's good to have a default resume. I don't know if you do this or not, but customize your resume for each job that you apply for if you have time. Your objective field was pretty broad. I'm not sure if MIS / Analyst are very different, but if they are it looks like you have a very generic resume that you're handing out to everyone. If they are very closely intertwined, then it's fine, but if they're that close you can probably remove one.

Computer Skills: Don't forget to include any O/S if you have experience with nix or Mac.

Experience: Change it to a past tense, along with more emphasis on what you did and why it helped the company. (e.g. Coded software that allowed departmental testing of our latest release candidates, or Attended organizational meetings that required gathering information, analyze software, etc. where such-and-such was accomplished)

Focus more on you, and focus less on the generic stuff. For example, say those meetings were fairly boring and you didn't accomplish anything, then don't even mention them because it's not worth mentioning. If you were in charge of the meeting, write about what you were in charge of in more detail (e.g. gathering information related to expenses for the fiscal year)

Also sure to include any trivial accomplishments that you may have overlooked. For example, it says you were a manager at Target. Did you have any customers complain and had to settle disputes with angry customers? If so, gloat about it and make yourself look good: Successfully handled customer-disputes or something along those lines.

Another example is for the Cashier position -- you closed down the store, that means you were working with no supervision or something similar. Maybe you can write about that.

In general, write less about your tasks, and write more about you and what you did for the company, or what you did to make yourself a better person. It's under the experience heading after all. Your current employer probably won't care if you can stock fridges, but will definitely care that you were responsible enough to work at a store unattended.

Activities: Going along the lines as above, you don't really need this unless you accomplished something. Were you the president? Involved in any other way than simply being a member? Can you use them to make you look like a better person? If so, include them, otherwise, it's just fluff.

So, to wrap things up here are a few last pointers that I've learned:
- Don't be afraid to gloat and make yourself look good, even about trivial things. But be careful and make sure you don't sound cocky.

- Write more about yourself and how you can help the company. Do this through your experience, tasks, etc.


I hope that was helpful. I don't know if I'm coming across as being negative, and if I am, that's not what I intended.

[King_Critter]

What if you're a applying for your first job, and don't have any experience or references?

[Black.Ice]

Then you'll most likely be applying for a job that doesn't require a resume (only an application), such as a restaurant or something. If you're going into a job where you require a degree and you don't have any experience, it's kinda bad, but you can say you're looking for an entry level job.

Also, if you have your degree and don't have any experience, your degree better be pretty damn good. Because, technically, you should have had 20 extra hours per week to put into your studies.

[Protosschick99]

Alrighty, I know I can add to this...

I am actually looking for a job so I can use some critiquing on my resume. I removed my address and all important phone numbers :P Take a look:

[GroG]

Mostly formatting and grammatical stuff:


Align the sentences after the colon for Objective and Skills sections so that horizontally going down, they are straight with each other.
Almada Community development paragraph: all verbs should be in present tense. Also, try not to use weak/helping verbs like have and can, always use strong, to the point verbs. Example: "can properly cut wood and tile to specific measurements" changes to "cut wood and tile to specific measurements". Do this to all the descriptions.
United airlines - take out the sentence about flexible schedule - I'd say that's something you can speak on in an interview as opposed to a skill.
Taco Bell - I'd take out the line "Drive-thru and dining room cashier" and I'd add later to the line "Prepared food, washed dishes, took orders, and cashiered drive thru and restaurant counters"
JTM Professional - I'd change this to "Filed invoices, check stubs, and employee records. Sorted mail, answered phones, and entered data in an office environment."As for structure, I'd think about the size of your resume. You have a lot of whitespace. Personally, I'd think about putting the dates on the same line as the job and title and removing the bold. You want the job to stick out to the potential employer, not the date.

Also, I'd think about removing the separate jobs for each employer and just merge them into 1 job description. A lot of 1 liners for each separate job takes up a lot of space - merging them together into 1 job description would save you a lot of room. From what I understand, a lot of employers look at your first page and that's it - most don't even look past that. So try to fit everything on the first page if you can.

My instructor told me the smallest font to use was 9 pt., so when trying to move stuff around, keep that in mind.

This is definitely not everything, but hopefully it's enough to get you going on a 2nd draft. Maybe BI has some pointers to add, too ;p

[Black.Ice]

Yup, I definitely have pointers. :D

Like I said with GroG, I'm no expert, but I have a bit of experience. Here's what I'd change.

Email: Change your email to something more professional, e.g. grace.almada@gmail.com or something. Even if you don't want to change your email, you can check that account with your other gmail account or something. It's good to have a professional one.

I remember we were interviewing this girl and her email was sassy something something and it just struck me as odd. (And everyone else who were interviewing.) PC99 isn't a bad handle, but it's better to go more professional.

Change your resume to be 1 page or shorter. When I was helping my supervisor with the job-hiring process, we had about 120 resume's to look through. By the 20th one, I was skimming and multi-page ones were rarely read.

So, what info do you keep on the first page? Just like I said with GroG, keep only useful stuff about what you did, and how it benefited the company, or yourself. Also, don't be afraid to play on other's stereotypes of the job, especially if you've had one as cool as a flight attendant. A common stereotype (no matter how right or wrong it is) for a flight attendant is that it's a stressful job. So use that to your advantage. (e.g. Worked in a fast-paced environment.)

Also, use bullets. Bullets make things a lot easier because it's easier to read a list than reading a paragraph.

Remove the supervisor / reference information from the job information. At the bottom, add a "References available upon request."

The reason for this is simple. We never once called a reference for someone that we hadn't interviewed. I'm sure it varies from company to company, but first we'd interview the guy, and if we liked him / her, the manager would call his / her references.

Also, do you your contacts know that you're listing them as a reference? What if I called them today and asked about you? Would they say, "Who? I don't remember a Grace." ?

That would be very bad. You last worked with some of these people 3-4 years ago. Double check with them before putting them, if you haven't already.


Also, there are some things that you can remove from your job description. Like you're talking about how you know how to cut wood, etc. etc. How will that help you in the job that you are applying for? It probably wont, so it's not necessary to keep it. It's only useful when it shows you that learned something / or can adapt it to a job.

e.g. Learned how to safely use tools in a production environment. That shows that you're able to pick up basic skills and you can learn how to use the tools of the new job.

There's also one big error. According to your resume, you were employed at 4 different jobs at once! Apparently, in August of 2005, you were working at JTM, Moving on, Taco Bell and Almada...

I can understand one, or two, maybe even three, but when I see 4, I'm saying something is wrong. Even if you're working part time @ 20 hours a week, that's 80 hours a week. Doable, but unlikely. Maybe you were only doing 4-5 hours a week at certain jobs, but it might be best to clarify or some people like me will get confused.




Lastly, since you have a lot of experience, you don't need to list all of your jobs. Sort your jobs by the time you were employed there, your latest jobs first. You can scrap off your old jobs because they're too far back.


The reason for this is because it looks bad. If I were an HR guy, I'd be thinking that you cant hold a steady job or something like that, which is why you're bouncing back and forth. Would I want to hire you if you're only going to work with me for 2 months?

Anyways, those are just a few of my pointers. I'm not trying to be negative, just trying to help. Take it with a grain of salt!

[Protosschick99]

I did have four different jobs at once.

One of them was whenever a contract would come up.

My main job was Taco Bell and everything else I helped on my days off. Almada Community Development is my dad's corporation.

Moving On Entertainment ws an organization at my church.

And The Carpet Upholstery one was a lady from church that I help out a couple days a week.

I stopped that after I stressed my body and my heart out back in Jan. '07 [I had to go to the ER because I was getting chest pains and difficulty breathing]

So right now, I'm unemployed looking to set myself back into airline industry type work.

Thanks for these pointers, I will definately change up my resume :]

[Black.Ice]

I did have four different jobs at once.

One of them was whenever a contract would come up.

My main job was Taco Bell and everything else I helped on my days off. Almada Community Development is my dad's corporation.

Moving On Entertainment ws an organization at my church.

And The Carpet Upholstery one was a lady from church that I help out a couple days a week.

I stopped that after I stressed my body and my heart out back in Jan. '07 [I had to go to the ER because I was getting chest pains and difficulty breathing]

So right now, I'm unemployed looking to set myself back into airline industry type work.

Thanks for these pointers, I will definately change up my resume :]


No problem! 4 jobs. Man, I have no right to complain when I used to work my 1 job. :)

[Darmago]

I would love to get some critique on my resume, but its honestly posting a little too much info on the web that I care for.