Content Structuring

The first major consideration when delving into the construction of your resume is how you intend to structure your content. Granted you’ve decided on a resume format, the order in which skills, positions, or other details are elaborated on remains to be determined.

1A. Prioritize Section Placement

While at face value this tip may seem obvious, it can’t be stressed highly enough how important it is to prioritize the placement of certain sections.

• Make sure the most relevant information is placed “above-the-fold”, which refers to the top third of a page. You’ll need your employer to know the most valuable information straight away.

1B. Focus on Recent Experience

Whichever position you aim to apply for, make sure you tailor your resume to the requests set forward by the employer.

• Often times, it’s unnecessary to include experience 10-15 years in the past, which only further clutters the resume and hides the most important of information.
• It’s also generally accepted to not include positions which are unrelated to the job at hand; focus on what the employer wants to hear.

1C. The Online Supplement

For the majority of applicants, especially among them experienced professionals, it can be challenging to fit all relevant information within the 1-2 pages provided in the resume. The online-supplement offers a solution to this problem.

• Even though the length of a detailed resume can throw an employer off, a non-intrusive hyperlink to a personal site or video portfolio will allow employers a greater level of autonomy when reading through your application.
• This abstraction serves the additional benefit of keeping your resume cleanly organized, even while maintaining the professional and information-dense qualities of a standard resume.

Work Experience

Aside from the structure inherit in your resume, your description of past work experience may make or break the effectiveness of your resume. The key detail to remember when elaborating on work experience is to focus on recent, relevant, and targeted information.

2A. Understandable Jargon

A scarcely known fact, your boss isn’t the “only” or even the likeliest manager to read through your application at first glance. Your target audience may end up as the recruiter, assistant, or perhaps a higher ranking executive.

• Truthfully, there’s no way of cracking the code on who will end up reading your information; rather, you should tailor the diction to readers of all experience levels.
• Make sure what you’re saying is not only accurate, but also understandable.
• After all, if the resume manager loses themselves in your resume's vocabulary, it’s unlikely they’ll afford an honest assessment of your application.

2B. Focus on Problem Solving

Far too often, applicants fall into the habit of simply restating what past experiences they’ve gone through. While indeed, we would advise including accurate and summative information, an overly objective description of your employment history may throw off resume managers.

• In most cases, employers aren’t necessarily looking for the most qualified applicants; instead, their ideal candidate falls into the problem-solving archetype.
• Try to convey a problem-solving mindset through your application and give managers a sense of your creative aptitudes.

2C. Incorporate Supplementary Work

In addition to providing an overview of your primary work experience, let your employer know what other roles you’ve held or projects you’ve contributed to.

• It’s worthwhile to bear in mind that a resume manager sorts through hundreds of near-identical resumes, with similar work experience and generalized styles. Thus, leaving snapshots of personality or applied interest can help you with standing out from the crowd.
• Note, be wary of including irrelevant positions on the resume.
• Make sure whatever supplementary information included links or demonstrates a skill that corresponds to a relevant quality targeted in the desired position.

2D. Avoiding Soft Words

To a certain extent, the terms “team-player”, “leader”, or “problem-solver” have lost their ring amongst resume managers.

• Even though they may help to foment a sense of credibility and professionality within your resume, these vague terms have come to be over-used and have consequently lost their value.
• Rather than using expressions to describe your professional characteristics, leave your employers to infer this information by demonstrating your achievements first-hand.

Education

The inclusion of educational background is somewhat of a nuanced topic. Some applicants mistakenly include their education first-and-foremost, above more relevant employment history or qualifications. However, to not mention degree holdings at all on your resume would be a vast understatement of the value of college education. The solution lies in packing this information to be brief, concise, and to-the-point, while also maintaining a level of clarity and professionality desired by employers.

3A. Keep it Brief

While it's true that a college degree holds value in the face of employers, post-secondary education is typically a pre-requisite to many applications.

• Thus, unless your degree is stamped from a world-renowned or nationally recognizable university, keep your education overview to-the-point.
• The purpose of the resume is to demonstrate unique qualification, and in many cases, educational experience fails to elaborate on just that.

3B. Skip Labeling Dates

A time stamp may hold sentimental significance to you, but rarely will graduation or enrollment dates make any difference in the resume manager’s judgement.

• Such information instead serves to clutter the application and hide more pertinent information from the employer's sight.

3C. Make Note of Honors

Include both a label and description of any honors received in college.

• Honors provide you with the ability to summarize years-worth of training within a tight and consistent package.
• They also highlight your accomplishment, as opposed to your mere experience, directing your resume manager to the information they really care about and thus cementing a sense of credibility apparent throughout the rest of your application.

Keywords

In the case of the resume, keywords direct your employer’s focus to specific themes. As was the case with soft-words, however, the over-inclusion of keywords may clutter the content of your resume; use them at your own discretion.

4A. Pass Preliminary ATS Checks

With the emergence of intelligent computing systems, many resume managers have turned to programs as a way of filtering out unqualified applicants.

• Including certain “buzz-words” commonly checked by these programs will increase your chances of making it past this step.

4B. Respond to Employer Requests

It is common practice for resume advertisements to include certain keywords referring to qualifications or skills requested.

• Perhaps the single-most effective way in tailoring your application to your employer is by responding directly to such keywords.

4C. Use Numbers

Numbers have a way of drawing attention to a particular skill or accomplishment, especially when you’re attempting to emphasize your extent of contribution.

• Perhaps the single-most effective way in tailoring your application to your employer is by responding directly to such keywords.
• They may also play a role in substantiating your contributions, beyond what is capable with plain English.

Hiding Information

No matter the level of accomplishment inherent in an application, there is bound to be some hidden or misrepresented information. So truthfully, how do you go about addressing these experiences while at the same time trying to smooth-out any rough edges? Ultimately, honesty is valued by employers and your addressing of this information should reflect that understanding.

5A. Short-Term Jobs

While it’s true that any recent job involvement is noteworthy, there are some instances when your best option is to exclude certain information.

• Take, for instance, if you only held a job for a matter of months… ask yourself whether the experience reshaped your skillset or brought new definition to your professional identity.
• If not, there is no shame in cutting it out.
• Doing so will trim down your application and direct employers' focus to the real 'meat' of your application.

5B. Provide Honest Explanation

Your resume is only worth as much as you make it out to be. What value are your accomplishments if you don’t show honesty when summarizing them?

• If your employer suspects a whiff of suspicion when reading over your application, the rest of your accomplishments may lose credibility by consequence.
• With this understanding, it is of paramount importance to show honesty throughout your application, with the exception of hiding minor details or altercations.

5C. Address Call-to-Action

A past failure often serves as an opportunity to bring about change in your career.

• Rather than drowning in past mishaps, use them to your own advantage by outlining what they taught you or how they transformed your skillset/mindset/aptitudes.
• Of course, you'll want to show delicacy when it comes to owning up to your mistakes.
• You'll need to recognize your wrong-doings before addressing how you intend to fix them in the future.

Accomplishments, Skills, and Interests

Elaborating on accomplishments, skills, and interests is somewhat of a precariousarea. While on the one hand, you should be trying to “upsell" your accomplishments, you should also show mindfulness towards advertising not just your raw successes, but also the problems solved when getting there..

6A. Technical and Humanitarian Skills

Elaborating on relevant skills provides you with the opportunity to set apart your application from the rest of the application pool.

• Advanced skillsets, excluding basic competencies such as writing emails or using Microsoft Paint, also allow you to demonstrate your qualifications beyond what is addressed in the cover letter or by keywords.
• Elaborating on such details is vital when catching your employer's attention and solidifying your invite to the interview stage.

6B. Take Use of Categorization

A skillset or accomplishment list that is unorganized or otherwise disorienting may deter a resume manager from finishing their read.

• For this reason, it is recommended to divide your relevant information into different categories, as a way to signal an employer in the right direction.

6C. Avoid Controversy

Heated conversation points- religion or politics for instance- are generally to be avoided when applying for a job position.

• Simply put, your aim as an applicant is to convey to an employer your compatibility in being able to work with them.
• Controversial viewpoints may instead carry out the opposite effect, violating the level of professionality apparent across the rest of your application.

Styling Options

In general, we would advise taking this guidance with a grain of salt. Your choice of styling will be entirely dependent on the rest of the theme of your application. However, with a more traditional, muted or minimalistic style, these choices should be aptly suited to your purposes.

7A. Font

When searching around for a font, you want to ensure your employer stays focused on the content itself, rather than miscellaneous details such as distracting fonts.

• While you should only use 1 font thoroughout, aside perhaps from labeling or contact information, our recommendations for font-families include Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, and Garamond.

7B. Size

Your choice of font-size will undoubtedly dictate the size of the rest of the application as a whole.

• Stay between 10pt and 12pt for information and labels, respectively. Your name may vary in size depending on the rest of the style.
• However, a general rule of thumb is to try to encapsulate as much information as possible while maintaining a clean, ergonomic, and intuitive interface to your resume.

7C. Margins

Leave ample margin spacing as a way to direct your employer’s focus to information smoothly.

• Ideal margins range from 0.5” to 0.9”, though we would recommend .75” all around.

Submission

Paper-copy submissions were far more popular before the advent of the Internet and have since been replaced almost entirely by digital copies. There is still a use in submitting by-hand, as a way to demonstrate commitment to an employer, however. Your choice in whether to submit digitally or by hand-copy will ultimately depend on the employer’s preference.

8A. Save it as a PDF

The PDF format is generally accepted as desirable over .doc submissions.

• Whereas with .doc submissions, files may be reformatted upon opening, the pdf is completely standardized across different devices.

8B. Naming Conventions

Indicate your name or job title and include the keyword ‘Resume’ in the file name.

• A typical convention includes separating spaces with the ‘underscore’ character.