Resume tips

[Uglyowl]

At our office some of us got a good chuckle over this ladies position of: Ass. Manager

If your resume is 1 page and a few sentences, then do your hardest to get it to one page. If you absolutely need more than one page, then so be, but most don't.

[dogdrool]

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1) Make your resume fit on a single page.

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Wrong.

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Okay, perhaps my advice doesn't apply to some IT position where your only goal is to list off every single buzz word that you've heard over the past 5 years. I'm more speaking of a position where your overall intelligence and drive is just as valuable as experience in some particular environment.

The point about one page resumes is that if you're smart, and you edit it well, you can fit a lot of information on a single page. It means a lot more to see a rock-solid one page resume than an unfocused buzzword list that spills onto 2.5 pages.

Also, there's just the very practical point that most people who interview you only look at your resume for 1 minute before they speak with you. "Hey Bob, there's a dude down in 14b that we're interviewing. Want to ask him some questions? Here's his resume."

Or even if all interviewers have the resume in advance, many will slack and put off reading them because they probably have other more important or more interesting things to do.

[cbloom]

One good candidate once sent me a resume that had a 1 page "abstract" with all the key information, and then like a 5-page portfolio with a full description of his major accomplishments. I thought that was a fine way to go, though I basically didn't read the portfolio because I already knew he was qualified enough.

1 page may be a bit extreme in some cases but for software hiring I'm with dogdrool that I'd much rather see a really tight 1 page than a thin couple of pages. Basically anything that's fluff or filler just keep cutting and cutting until you're left with only the really interesting meat.

[IggyWH]

I really need to get on the ball with a resume, cover letter and salary history so I can start looking for a new job. Hopefully, I can land myself a job before I move.

I'm pretty stupid when it comes to these things. Are MS Word templates, or templates in general, a bad idea? Any quality websites that anyone has that they can recommend? I need some serious help here!

[cardsharkk04]

So in high school I got some pretty solid awards, in college I don't really do anything. How bad would that look to put an award from high school on a resume when I'm trying to get a finance internship?

[MasterLJ]

Btw, I don't know why I need to even say this... use spellcheck.

Surprisingly, 50%+ of the people that submit their resume do not use it.

[tuq]

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Btw, I don't know why I need to even say this... use spellcheck.

Surprisingly, 50%+ of the people that submit their resume do not use it.

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That doesn't bother me so much, it just means that I don't need to waste my time engaging with those 50+%.

Iggy, templates are aight, but the frames tend to drive me nuts and if I make any modification to the resume (removing candidate contact info, adding our letterhead, etc.) managing the frames can be a royal pain in the ass.

I think a better bet is to stick to a frameless resume with good use of bolding, bullets, italics, and spacing.

Another reason frames aren't a great idea is that while they won't show when you print them out, they do when you're looking at it on your screen, and that's how I would guess the balance of people first see them these days.

If you are still coming up dry PM me and I'll send you some sterilized resumes that IMO are laid out nicely.

[DeezNuts]

Laminate that bad boy, show them you mean bizness.

DN

[Thremp]

tuq,

Recent grads (one or two different jobs) should never have >1 page. No?

[Mangatang]

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Laminate that bad boy, show them you mean bizness.



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Too funny.