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What is a resume? It’s a summary of your life experiences that have bearing on your ability to do a job. Include only positive things about yourself.
When would you use a resume? • To seek employment • To seek election to a political office
What is the major purpose of an employment resume? • To get an interview • To mail to companies in response to an employment ad • To mail to a company for whom you would like to work • To accompany a job application when applying for a job in person. Many companies require this.
What you might include in a resume? Anything you think would be helpful in gaining an interview. For example: • A summary of your employment • Military experience • Your education • Community service activities • Personal information • Hobbies, achievements, awards, publications, patents, memberships • Special skills, languages spoken • Job objectives • References
How do you start preparing a resume? Heading Write your name, address, and phone number. If you have a temporary address, such as a college address, also write a permanent address. If your phone is often not attended, you may wish to include a second telephone number where messages can be left.
Professional Experience Next, record your employment–if this is the strongest part of your resume. For each job you have held, include • Name of the company • Address • Nature of business • Start and end dates (including months) • Supervisor’s name • Your job title • What you did • What you were responsible for • What you accomplished • Equipment used. You probably will not include all of this in your final resume, and you may choose to organize your resume differently, but to start you should record it all–you can edit and change format later. A chronological resume starts with your current job and goes backward in time to your first job. There are other ways to organize a resume–such as by function (sales experience, marketing experience, advertising experience)–but for most people the chronological will be best.
Note that you do not use the word “I”. Use action words: developed, wrote, supervised.
Education If you have recently graduated, and your education credentials are good, while your work experience is weak, you should put your education at the top.
Mention awards, honor societies, and other honors (dean’s list), scholarships, degrees, major, minor, extracurricular activities, and fraternities or sororities. Part-time, during-school employment may be appropriate here. Post-school courses and workshops may be listed.
References References are not usually included, unless they are well known in the field. Why? Because you might be listing a bad reference and not know it. Better to use: References Available on Request. Then if references are asked for, but you do not get an interview, you can consider changing your references.
Job Objective In most cases we suggest putting job objectives in a cover letter and not in your resume. An exception would be if you would only consider a job in a specific field. Otherwise you may not be able to use your resume to apply for an interesting job you see in the help wanted ads, for which you seem to be qualified, but which is outside the scope of your written job objective. For example, you have a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management, and experience in this field. You put such work in your job o
