In the last eight years, I’ve seen over 410,000 resumes. No joke. I’ve hung onto less than 1% of them. Let’s go on a limb and say that I can tell the difference between a good one and a bad one—if for no other reason than anyone who sees that many will eventually “form an eye”. Toss in the fact that I see which ones my clients, the hiring companies, have migrated toward, and I now have, uh, two eyes.
While interviewing is an extremely important skill, you’ll often never get the chance without an enticing resume. This doesn’t mean printing it on neon paper or scenting it with rose perfume.
Write your own resume. It’s your career—you need to take responsibility! Nobody knows your accomplishments like you do. If you’re in an interview and the employer inquires about an item on your resume, you better be able to cite chapter and verse the way you can recite the alphabet.
Summarize and then re-summarize. The top portion of your resume should serve as an executive summary of who you are and what you’ve accomplished—NOT the position you are seeking. Think in terms of encapsulating yourself in a Career Profile & Career Highlights theme. You want the employer to first see what you offer, not what you want. Hello!?!? Anyone who tells you to put your Objective or the Position You’re Seeking at the top of the resume should be flogged. The remaining body of the resume should include a summary of your most important accomplishments, not a detailed itinerary of every day of your work life.
Include what’s relevant. Let me repeat that. Include what’s relevant. Make sure to include your most relevant accomplishments and their impact on the organization. Where possible, include metrics in any form that is appropriate for your position. For example, “improved sales figures” isn’t nearly as meaningful as “improved sales by 15% from $100K to $115K.” You’ve now provided the specifics, the impact, and also included context so the employer understands the magnitude of the contribution. (That is, “improved sales by 100%” means very little if you sold $2 vs. $1 as opposed to $200K vs. 100K.)
Make it chronological. Make sure you identify your previous employers in reverse chronological order (most recent first). Don’t—and I repeat don’t—try grouping functions or position types across companies. It’s confusing. The employer wants to get a sense of your evolution over time. It’s difficult to determine this if your resume looks like the Maze of Theseus. It also increases the chances the employer will think you’re hiding something (such as a gap in employment).
Show you’re a team player. The chronology of your resume is important—top to bottom it needs to look clean. The way the employer’s eyes scan from left to right is equally important. Make sure the left most information is your current and past employers as opposed to the position you held. Why? Because you send subliminal messages (or potentially cause the employer to misconstrue). If the first piece of information is your title or job function, the employer might feel you’re self-centered. Me first. Company Second. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Why take the chance when you’re not there to explain what a giver you are?
Place education and credentials where they belong. If you just graduated college, congratulations—you can put your education at the top. If you’re anyone else, it goes at the bottom. If you’re really proud of your MBA or PMP certification, I’ll cut you some slack and you can also put it next to your name like you were an MD, DDS, or some other individual who had to punish themselves before they started a real job. Just kidding…about the punishment, not the placement of the credentials.
Some additional tips:
- Never, and I mean NEVER, use a template. It’s lazy. It’s obvious. It does nothing to set you apart.
- Optimize the length. There is no one perfect rule-of-thumb. Generally speaking, whether you’ve worked 10 years or 40, I’m convinced you can encapsulate the germane points in two pages. As you evolve in years, simply further summarize and shrink your more distant jobs to fit to that length. If you graduated a year ago, there is no excuse to have a resume longer than one page.
- Include only important extra-curricular activities and accomplishments. If you are a member of PRSSA, feel free to include it. Leave off your knitting accomplishments, unless you’re interviewing for a tapestry position.
- Tailor your resume for the position you seek.
If you are applying for a design position, it’s okay to be a bit more creative. If you are applying for a job at a law firm, stick to the simpler formats.
This is a good resume for design, but a law firm won’t be impressed. They’ll see it as childish.
- Proof read. Proof read. Puleeeeze. A simple grammar error will get you eliminated faster than you can blink. If not, it plants a seed in the employer’s mind that you lack attention to detail.
Writing a resume is an important form of communication. Make sure yours says, “You can’t wait to hire me!”
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
You say to never use a template.. So do you have any innovative ideas on creating a new style of resume?
Hi Alicia, I have ideas and am happy to share. Can you let me know your profession, industry, or genre? That way I’ll give you some quick bullets that would be more targeted for you!
Hi Andrew, I currently work as an Account Manager/Business Relationship Manager for Reed Elsevier (Lexis Nexis). After reading all of your articles (amazing articles and company-btw) it has motivated me to innovate my resume as well as my LinkedIn profile. I just need a stepping stone.
Alicia, first off, nice remarks like that will get you loads of help from me! I always enjoy hearing from readers and the nice feedback honestly serves to motivate me to help more. Luckily you are in a profession that also lends itself well to what we support at milewalk as well as what I’ve done in my career. I’m going to email you directly and can also give you my resume (which is not visible to the public) as well as some other helpful tools for your career management. Sound good?
Andrew,
Thank you so much for the prompt response. I look forward to your email.
I have the same question as Alicia, what are ways to have a professional looking resume without making it look like a template in the accounting industry?
Joseph, thanks for the inquiry. I would suggest following the guidelines in the post and also make sure your resume has a handful of sections that cover…
Career Profile – a summary of who you are (e.g., Experienced Accounting professional with 10 years of…etc. etc.)
Career Highlights – 3-4 bullets of Major Accomplishments throughout your career
Work Experience – in reverse chronological order the Companies you worked for, the roles/titles you performed, and your accomplishments within each.
Education & Other Credentials – at the bottom as appropriate (of course place your creds at the top if you’re a CPA, MBA, etc.)
Leave off Objective Statements and things of that nature. The resume is about what you can provide evidenced by what you have accomplished. A resume is never about what you want.
I hope that helps!
Hi Andrew,
I just want to let you know that I enjoyed all your articles and body of work in career development especially on how to write professional resume. This is a very impressive and useful information for job seekers. Overall, it is a very good article. Thank you for sharing it with us!
However, I am sad to say that I am doing contrary to some of the point you mentioned in the article for example in area of writing resume “objective”. My question for you is: how would an employer or company know what my desire position, whenever I am soliciting for a position in an organization especially when this position is not advertised? I feel I am in a cross road and I want to make thing right to get me hired.
I am recently looking for new opportunity as Health, Safety and Environmental Advisor position.
I would really appreciate your recommendation or ideas on how to remedy this problem. I can forward you my resume for your review.
Please and thank you.
Regards,
Ken
Ken, first off, thank you for reading and glad you are enjoying the blog posts. Thanks too for the very kind remarks.
Regarding your questions related to how the employer would know your desires regarding your preferred position, I would suggest expressing them verbally which I recognize is not always possible. In the event you cannot share them live, another good alternative is a cover letter or email (whichever is more appropriate based on how you’re communicating with them).
I hope that helps!
Andy
Hi Andrew,
Thank you so much for this; I admire your transparency and tremendous help via articles and blog posts. I am currently in the process of updating my resume and LinkedIn profile and you give very good pointers. Btw, I agree 100% with writing your resume yourself and to not use a template. My biggest struggle right now is summarizing and condensing information. My resume is within 2 pages but I feel they’re still very wordy. I tend to jam several things into one bullet point, making them rather hard to digest.
Do you have pointers so I can make my resume/profile clearer and easier to read for prospective employers?
Thank you again,
Mira
Hi Mira,thanks for reading and thanks for the question. Since you already have it down to two pages, I wouldn’t be too concerned. One suggestion I would offer is regarding the way the resume is laid out. You want it to be clean visually and capturable to the eye. Too help, I’d suggest reading a blog post I just released this week called How to Write a Resume That Gets You the Job Interview.
I hope that helps!
Hi Andrew,
Whenever I see I milewalk post, I think, “Oh, great, I’m going to learn something useful.” Thank you for confirming that we should write our own resumes. My example: I met with a resume consultant about 6 years ago and she took what I had written and changed it so much that I didn’t recognize myself on paper When I said as politely as possible that what she had written didn’t resemble my experience, I was told that employers would hire me with what she supplied but not with what I had written. I couldn’t use her version, it would have been a lie (or at least a gigantic fib). Yes, I was hired even without the superwoman resume.
Lucie, great to hear from you and thanks for the nice words! I’m also glad to hear that you got hired with an honest interpretation and presentation of yourself. Always be truthful, but make sure to put a positive light on all the truth!
Hi Andrew,
Thank you so much for helping us in writing our resume. your article really helped me a lot . but there are some points i am confused. you said donot use temples and objective statement. do you have any other way through which i can make my resume eye catching. thank you.
Hi Malik, check out this one. It has what you need! http://milewalk.com/mwblog/build-ultimate-professional-resume-andrew-lacivita/
Hi Andy! I enjoy reading listening to your useful articles and protips! Thank you for doing this great job for us. I started to change my resume and -oh god- it takes hours and days to summarize all I have done for that last 10 years of my work experience. But I guess it is worth it.
I have come to the point that I personally should sit down and evaluate myself first: who is me (in worlds perspective), what it is great that I have done (relevantly or in general?) and what my accomplishments were. Do I understand it correctly: I need to do this BEFORE I start scratching my resume from the very beginning? If yes, could you please share some pro-tips on how to evaluate myself properly, so that all I have got in my mind, then on paper- would not be too loose and wordy? Thank you and God bless!
Rustam, I have a video series titled 5 Steps to Career Success and the first few are on that very topic. Check it out on the front page of the milewalkacademy.com!
Hi Andrew,
I tried almost a 1000 resume template and send to many companies but couldn’t get any response. I got sick off having no reply.i cant understand what’s wrong.Can you please helps me out to make an attractive CV .
Hi Nasir. use this format…http://milewalk.com/mwblog/build-ultimate-professional-resume-andrew-lacivita/!
A good resume is absolutely essential for your future career, so it helps to know how to right one. I do like that the article strongly emphasizes the importance of proofreading the resume at the end of the article as well. It might even help to have it looked at by a professional resume consultant to see if they can offer any advice for revisions.
Since we shouldn’t use templates for our resumes, so do you have any unique ideas on creating a new style of resume for a fresh graduate willing to get into the Marketing Industry. Please any quick bullets for me?
I just discovered you on facebook through another person’s comments. I really did enjoy the information and I am putting it to use. You say not to use a resume format, however do you have any suggestions for someone who has 11 years of experience in management. The management experience is covered in the following areas: Fortune 50 high volume retail operation department; founder of a nonprofit; and a small healthcare business office. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
James, thanks for the comment and question. I’m not quite sure what you mean when you say, I say not to use a resume format. You definitely should use a resume formatted according to my template! LOL. You can find that in the build your ultimate professional resume video or on the front page (there’s a download) of the milewalkacademy.com.
Hi Andrew,
Is putting a photo on a resume good idea or not?
I am a teacher and want to apply in an international school.