Your résumé is a marketing tool that you can use to highlight your strengths and unique qualifications. A résumé is a vehicle of communication as well as a demonstration of how you communicate. The primary purpose of it is to convince an employer to invite you for a job interview.
A good résumé should:
Invite the reader to read it (clear layout, quality printing, no extraneous information). Start sentences with action verbs like organized, managed, designed. Highlight your accomplishments as they relate to future work.
- Be free of spelling and punctuation errors.
- Speak the reader's language. Use vocabulary of the industry you are targeting.
- Be concise. Cite short examples. Include numbers/results whenever possible.
Your résumé is a device to present the most positive information about yourself. Omit the negative. Demonstrate you have the ability to produce.
Three Styles of Résumés:
- Chronological style is basically an accounting of whom you've worked for and what you've accomplished in each position, listed in chronological order from most recent to oldest. It is the style most commonly used by new college graduates and by individuals changing jobs within a given career field.
- The Functional/Skills résumé places emphasizes on what you've accomplished and de-emphasizes where you did it. This allows the candidate to organize experiences, gathered from a variety of arenas, according to specific functions or skills. Past employers are listed on the résumé, but near the bottom, indicating only the employer's name, the candidate's position title and the dates of employment. This style is most commonly used by career changers who are trying to demonstrate the transferability of their skills from one setting to another or by someone who is re-entering the work force after a period of absence.
- The third style is the Combination résumé. Job seekers using this style merge the elements of each of the other styles. They will include an overview or summary of qualifications at the beginning, in which they stress their skills and characteristics appropriate for the position, but they revert to the reverse chronological style for the remainder of the document. This overview section is used to "set the scene" so that the résumé is read from a particular perspective.
Choose the style that you feel will work best for you, given your unique situation. Finally, remember that you are constantly learning, and developing; consequently, your résumé is always in "process"!
Resume Samples
For a more in-depth explanation on resumes continue to Items That Appear on a resume.