Students: Career Planning: Resume Writing: Step 4

STEP 1 |STEP 2 |STEP 3 |STEP 4 |STEP 5

Do's of Resume Writing

While fitting your resume into your choice of format, consider the suggestions below for making the appearance and persuasiveness of your resume more effective. REMEMBER: Your resume should be "user friendly". Write it for the reader, keeping in mind that the average resume is reviewed for less than sixty seconds.

General Information

• Use phrases, not complete sentences.
• Keep phrases to ten or twelve words and paragraphs to three or four lines.
• Make your statements clear and concise.
• Avoid the pronoun “I”.
• Use action words.
• Make all statements positive, omit negatives.
• Emphasize capabilities and skills, especially transferable skills such as “coordinated, initiated, supervised”, etc.
• Stress accomplishments.
• Target résumés to different jobs, using more than one résumé with different objectives.
• Use numbers to quantify achievements whenever possible.

Style Information

• Use “white space” to emphasize separate sections.
• Use bolding, underlining, CAPITALIZATION and bullets.
• Limit resume to two pages.
• Have resume printed on 8½"x11" good quality bond paper, one side only.
• Use white or off white paper which will photocopy well.
• Block, center and balance text on page.
• Use clear, sharp print such as type with letter quality or laser printer.
• Proofread - use perfect spelling and grammar.
• Send resume with matching cover letter and envelope