How to Make Your Résumé Shine

By eHow Careers & Work Editor

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Your résumé is a work-in-progress. You will probably revise it dozens of times during your career.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

Step1
Gauge the relevance of your résumé to your current career goals.
Step2
Add, then highlight, action words such as "promoted" and "increased."
Step3
Sprinkle your résumé liberally with industry buzzwords to demonstrate your insider know-how.
Step4
Tailor your previous job responsibilities - within reason - to best match the description of the position you want.
Step5
Use the active voice and bullet points to make information easier to digest. Steer clear of passive verbs.
Step6
Fit your résumé onto one page, no matter how extensive your experience.
Step7
Choose stationery with a little personality. Or, if you are interested in high-technology fields, send your résumé by e-mail.
Step8
Plan to send your résumé so that it arrives at an opportune time.
Step9
Leave lots of space on all four margins.

Tips & Warnings

  • If sending your résumé via e-mail, use standard fonts and avoid bolding, underlining or italicizing text.
  • Leave out information about your race, age or political, religious or sexual orientation.
  • Print your résumé on a high-quality laser printer or new ink jet printer for crisp letters. Avoid using dot matrix and old ink jet printers that can smear and blur.

Comments

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on 1/22/2007 Thank you.

Anonymous

Anonymous said

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on 8/8/2006 If sending a rsum to a company's HR department (assuming you did not send it to the person doing the hiring), NEVER staple a two-page rsum. Staples send rsums directly to the trash. They don't have time to unstaple them before scanning.

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on 8/8/2006 If you're having trouble filling up some space for work experience (especially first-time workers and college students), make sure that you put in any volunteer work that you may have done! Don't make it sound self-glorifying, just humbly put it in. Employers notice people who give of their time to help others.

Anonymous

Anonymous said

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on 3/15/2006 When proofreading, if you aren't sure if a word is spelled right or used in the correct manner, use the synonym or thesaurus function. Right click the word in question, and choose the thesaurus feature from the drop down list. This will avoid embarrassing mistakes such as using a wrong word even though it may be spelled correctly, and not have spell check catch it.

The following tip I learned for proofreading comes from my time in the printing industry.

Take whatever you are proofreading and turn it so it is upside down in front of you. Then read it from the now bottom, to the top. This forces your brain to look at each letter when reading the words and not just skim over the first and last letter and fill in the blanks, which is what normally happens when we read words that we are so familiar with. Mistakes in spelling and grammar just seem to jump out at you!

Anonymous

Anonymous said

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on 11/22/2005 Your resume is probably the most important document in your business career. You have to realize that it is not just a list of jobs and duties, but a marketing document designed with one message - promoting you. In effect, you are creating an advertisement about you! The cover letter is the one-minute introduction often giving a different slant on the details, while the resume gives the full information. Together, the resume and cover letter cannot get you a job but should get you an interview.

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eHow Article: How to Make Your Résumé Shine

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