Resume Writing

Part 5 Resume Writing

Think of your resume as a continuous work in progress that can and should be changed when you: 1. Add skills, education, etc  2. Think of a better way to say something that you said before 3. Forgot something you didn’t say before 4. Didn’t realize that something you did would be pertinent to a job you are now applying for.

We started with the address and moved to the title in my last post—talked about how no one cares about your objective. Now we’ve gotten to the next part of the resume.

Many young people will put their education next.  Unless you have no work experience at all, or you went to Harvard, education should be at the end (and if you went to Harvard—good for you—but since most people didn’t, they might find it offensive or bragging. So almost always, put it last).

The top part of your resume is really important. It’s the opportunity to bullet point skills, highlight accomplishment and generally tell people why you’re good, not just where you have worked. It also may be the only area that someone looks at and if it doesn’t have some skill or experience they are looking for, they will likely move on to the next one.

A standard format after name and title is a brief summary followed by bullet pointed skill set and then some specific highlights of accomplishments.

So it would look something like this;

Senior Level Digital Strategy Exectuive

Accomplished and seasoned Strategy and implementation specialist with an eye on the bottom line and conversion to sales. Adept at writing long boring copy that may or may not interest anyone reading this resume but need to put something of value so they’ll consider me for this spot.

·         Expert level omniture, site-catalyst, google adwords

·         Advanced analytic capability using SAS and other like software

·         Excellent presenter and communicator of difficult to understand concepts

·         Data expert with….

·         Strong ability to get along with others and play in the sandbox

(this generally looks good in two columns but my word processing skills aren’t good enough for this).

After this bullet pointed skill portion of the resume, you might have (or be able to legitimately make-up) specific accomplishment you can highlight in at this time. For example:

·         Help xyz company increase leads 120% in my time running the strategy group

·         Increased sales by 200% over a two year period

·         Able to grow account 120% with in my tenure in this position

·         Responsible for a data migration to a new system in a six month period

·         Financial analysis was able to save my company $100million dollars

Since you’re new to the job market, it’s obvious that your skill set and accomplishments will be more humble. But you can still use the format to show your skills and accomplishments. For example,

-was able in a six month internship to research and evaluate market competitors that lead to companywide savings, etc.

The next part of the resume should be a clean chronology with company, title, location, dates—followed by job description and more accomplishments if you’ve not listed them in the above section. For example:

The Best Advertising Agency, New York, NY                                     Summer 2012

Associate Account Executive (internship)

Responsible for day to day operation of the Blah Bank business. Specific duties included: competitive analysis using SAS, review of strategy and creative, writing in-depth recommendations to increase sales.

·         Was able to help client increase sales 35% while working on the business

·         Streamlined internal process to help make more efficient and move faster

Do this for all related jobs you’ve had. Education and specific qualifications should follow at the end.

There are lots of templates out there including Microsoft word. There is no reason not to use them, especially if you are “bullet and column challenged” as I am.

Next we’ll get into how to convert this to Linked In and About Me.