A Simple Guide To Writing Your Resume
To most people, writing a resume can sometimes be too time consuming especially when it is your first time making one for yourself. Writing a resume isn’t all about listing down skills, qualifications, and facts about yourself to attract an employer. Creating a resume involves careful planning and organization. It is also a technical art of “selling” or marketing yourself to prospective employers.
For the first step, learning about the three basic types of resume format is the first thing that you should do. Getting to know the ups and downs of each format allows you to build up ideas on how you should be presenting your document.
If you are someone who doesn’t have any employment gaps or vacancies in your work history, using a chronological resume format is the way to go. This type of resume format allows you to emphasize on the progression of your career by using a reverse chronological order to showcase whole professional career with its built-in time line. This is also the most common and widely used resume format today.
If you are an individual who wants to emphasize more on your skills and achievements, utilizing the functional resume format is the best choice. This type of formatting places your most extensive skills and career achievements up front which is good especially if you are someone who is looking for a change in careers. This format also diverts your reader’s attention from unwanted information like gaps in your professional career or frequent change of employers for there are no traces or indicators of time in this specific format.
Incorporating the two formats is also possible through the use of a combination resume format. This format combines both the strengths of a chronological and functional resume but unfortunately, their relative weaknesses as well. It is the most effective resume format that you can use as far as marketing yourself is concerned.
After carefully crafting, formulating and presenting your document, do not forget to add in some “Buzz” words or key words to add in some spunk to your presentation. These “power words” do not only make your resume sound appealing, they also stir up positive vibes upon your reader.
Once done, perform some proofreading on your document. Running a spell check and having someone examine it for grammatical flaws is important. Keep in mind that a single error on your resume will most likely send it to the nearest stack of unwanted resumes or worse, to the nearest paper shredder available. Being open to positive feedbacks that could help you improve your presentation is also not a bad thing.
Printing and sending out your resume to your prospective employers is the final step. Be sure that you use only black print text on solid white paper to maintain a professional look. Also use relatively easy to read fonts like Times New Roman, Arial or Verdana with decent font size ranging from 10 to 14 point size. Stick to serif or sans-serif font styles and if possible, try to stay away from using decorative fonts styles as well as italics.
After following this simple guide, it won’t be long for you to make a resume similar to those with professional quality. Most importantly, updating or making yourself a new resume in the future will surely not be as frustrating and time consuming as it used to be.
