Making a Professional Resume

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Pat Goodwin, with patgoodwinassociates. com, and today, we're going to talk about how to make a professional resume. When I think about professional resume, I think everyone is a professional in their field of work, no matter what their work is, so let's talk about the basic components, of putting together a resume. At the top of the page, 8 x 10, you would start with ten or eleven font, and have your name centered, all caps and bold. Underneath that to the left, you would have your contact information, your cell number, and/or your email on the right. If you choose not to put your personal mailing address for security reasons, it's ok, as long as they can contact you, either by your cell number, or your email. Make sure your email is a professional email, and not something with a silly name attached to it. Underneath that, you would have the word Summary, which is centered, and all bold. This is a three or four statements sentence, that you write, that demonstrates who you are as a person. When you send in your resume, and a professional resume, employers will look at a resume this way. They want to know what you've done, when you've done it, and where. There's your chronological resume, but when they meet you, they want you to be able to demonstrate how you think, so the summary, is going to be three or four sentences, stating who you are as a person. Highly effective, results driven, highly motivated, are skilled, innovative, creative. Talk about the work itself, and then how you do your work. Right under the summary, you would have centered in bold, the professional experience, so you would have Professional Experience. Right under that, a space below, you would have the name of the company you currently work for, the city, state. To the right, you're going to have your dates. You can use much more space on the page, if you put your work experience to the right, and your dates to the left. Then, you begin creating your accomplishment statements, based on a methodology that I use, called SAR, Situation, Action, Result. If you are able to create your resume, based on that methodology, that is going to help you more than you realize, when you get to the interview, because you've spent the time in the resume development, thinking about what you did, how well you did it, and what is the result, so three, four, five bullets, under your most current job, if you can come up with that many, and then you would have the company that you worked at prior to that, in the same methodology. On the second page, if it runs to the second page, you're going to have your education. If you have your degree, you would want to have your degree first, comma, then the university, comma, city, state, and the year of graduation. If you're concerned about age discrimination, you can leave off the date of graduation. Underneath that, you would have technical skills, office skills, computer skills, any publications, or public speaking things, possibly, organizations that you are a member of, certifications, and that's how you build a professional resume."