Getting your resume ready to send to employers? Make sure you follow these eight pieces of advice.
1. Make sure the top of your resume includes the necessary information to contact you.
This includes your full name, address (city and state as a minimum), contact phone number (indicate cell or home), and a professional e-mail address.
Bonus tip: Ensure you have a personal greeting set up on your voicemail.
2. Add a brief summary of your qualifications following your personal information.
This should include no more than four sentences explaining your work history, background knowledge, and experience.
3. Highlight technical skills by including certifications you’ve acquired that are still active.
This is particularly valuable for job seekers interested in IT positions.
4. Following your summary of qualifications, include your education achievements.
Only include your GPA if it is 3.5 or higher. If you have a work history longer than 10 years, insert education information after work history on second page
5. Use “Professional Work History,” “Professional Experience,” or “Employment History” to describe your last 10 years of your work history.
Start with your most current position and work backward detailing each job you’ve held for the last 10 years. Bold the first two lines for each job, indicate job title, dates of employment, organization, and location of the position held.
6. Create a new job description and breakdown for each position you’ve held, even if you held multiple jobs in the same company.
Use 4-5 bullet statements for your last two positions (to include deployments). Hiring managers look closely at your last two years of work and your last two positions. You also want to add impact statements, other than generalized duties. Explain what you achieved in that position that set you apart from the average employee. Hiring managers like numbers; for instance, how many people did you supervise? What was the dollar value of equipment you worked on?
Related: How to write about your combat experience in your resume »
Quantify if you helped increase working production (30%) or saved money, re-utilized supplies and equipment in stock. Add results from an inspection. Also add any benchmarks you established, such as a database to track training or a checklist to ensure proper procedures were done correctly and how the product was used.
7. Add all college education in reverse chronological order.
Start with your most current degree. After college, you can add Six Sigma Training/Certs, A+, CDL, etc., followed by military training core and technical courses, such as mechanical, electrical, and finance courses. Ensure you include the dates of completion and where the training was awarded.
8. Only include significant medals.
Unless it’s a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Meritorious Service, Commendation, or Achievement medal, leave it off your resume. It’s best to include these under the appropriate job and not in a separate category of your resume.