How to Nail Your Resume
Your resume is a key to your future job, obviously.
There are so many important pieces to the resume puzzle. Employers will look at content more than anything. You can have a beautiful resume, but you won't be hired on solely because you know how to use a Microsoft Word resume template. Like an MLB scout wants to know their recruits specs, a future employer wants to know your stats: what you did at your last job and why you were valuable to your past employers.
1. Readers of your resume will want to know results of the work you did, not just the job you held.
Example: Do you have a blog? Did you leverage your own personal brand because of your awesome writing skills? Make yourself credible.
2. Don't repeat anything in your resume. Don't even repeat the action verbs you use for each bullet points.
There are a billion words you can use to describe that you did something. Here are a few of my favorite words: enhanced, promoted, created, developed, completed, etc.
3. When asking for references, ask a potential reference if they will be a "positive reference" for you.
Make sure your references like you.
4. Back to grammar. One grammatical error anywhere in the resume will result in your resume being thrown away.
Okay, earlier we said that content was the most important part of a resume, but grammar is so simple and easy to mess up. Have at least three competent, observant people look over your resume to make sure it is consistent, coherent and grammatically correct.
5. Make bullets concise and even.
I have never been the head of hiring at any company, but I can't imagine that reading through resumes is something to look forward to. Give the reader short, concise and to the point details.
If you choose to include bullet points under headings and subheadings, only use 3-5 bullet points for each and remain consistent in how many you use per heading.
NOTE: This is an abridgment from a presentation I received in class from Professor Stephen Whyte, Utah Valley University 2017.
