What information do I need in my resume?
At this stage, don’t worry about having your records perfectly arranged and categorized. Don’t even worry about having your entries in the right order. There are no extra points awarded for organization right now.
But there is a lot of information to organize, so the first step is to designate a single location in which to store all your records. Losing important transcripts, citations, or letters will simply lengthen the process and, in some cases, inhibit your ability to construct a perfect resume. I suggest creating a separate file folder for each major segment of information (with the appropriate filled-out summary form included, of course) using the following categories:
1. Work and volunteer experience
Review all of your work experience, whether it’s babysitting for the neighbors or overseeing a multi-million dollar marketing budget for a Fortune 100 company. Remember, every job counts, whether it was part-time or full-time, paid, or unpaid.
You will need the following information for each job. (Although it eventually may be recorded, utilized, and/or presented differently, you’ll need the same information for any volunteer activities—again, paid or unpaid.)
Name, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address of company.
Name, title, and e-mail address of your direct supervisor.
Exact dates worked (or involved).
Approximate number of hours per week.
Specific duties and responsibilities.
Specific skills utilized.
Specific accomplishments.
Letter(s) of recommendation.
Write a brief description of your responsibilities
At this stage, don’t worry about having your records perfectly arranged and categorized. Don’t even worry about having your entries in the right order. There are no extra points awarded for organization right now.
But there is a lot of information to organize, so the first step is to designate a single location in which to store all your records. Losing important transcripts, citations, or letters will simply lengthen the process and, in some cases, inhibit your ability to construct a perfect resume. I suggest creating a separate file folder for each major segment of information (with the appropriate filled-out summary form included, of course) using the following categories:
1. Work and volunteer experience
Review all of your work experience, whether it’s babysitting for the neighbors or overseeing a multi-million dollar marketing budget for a Fortune 100 company. Remember, every job counts, whether it was part-time or full-time, paid, or unpaid.
You will need the following information for each job. (Although it eventually may be recorded, utilized, and/or presented differently, you’ll need the same information for any volunteer activities—again, paid or unpaid.)
Name, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address of company.
Name, title, and e-mail address of your direct supervisor.
Exact dates worked (or involved).
Approximate number of hours per week.
Specific duties and responsibilities.
Specific skills utilized.
Specific accomplishments.
Letter(s) of recommendation.
Write a brief description of your responsibilities at each job, but don’t go into too much detail—just summarize what you did in each position. For example, if you’re a salesperson looking to move into sales management with a new company, your prospective employer will be interested in knowing:
How many people you supervised.
If you managed a budget and, if so, its size.
The amount of revenue for which you were directly (and indirectly) responsible.
The size of your sales territory.
This information will give employers a clear idea of the kind and scope of responsibilities you can handle. Consequently, it’s especially important to consider those responsibilities that are most applicable to your chosen field or targeted position.
After summarizing your responsibilities, list your accomplishments in specific terms.
What did you do on that job, project, or team, and what were the specific results? Did you increase profits? Cut expenses? Beat projections? Stay on or under budget?
Did you solve a problem? Exceed a goal? Improve product performance? Improve productivity or efficiency?
Here’s an example: In just two years, Anne revolutionized the production function at her company’s manufacturing plant. Even while understaffed, she managed to exceed production schedules and objectives and turn out a nearly defect-free product. These are major accomplishments that deserved to be a prominent part of her resume. Here’s how she concisely expressed them:
• Exceeded production schedules while manufacturing a 99.5% defect-free product.
• Surpassed objectives by 25% while 15% understaffed.
If you’re having trouble identifying specific individual accomplishments, consider departmental- or even company-wide projects in which you participated. Did your group supply the financial statistics that helped determine whether a key project should proceed? Did you serve on the team that evaluated your company’s current computer system? Perhaps you found upgrading the systems would provide needed services and the company wouldn’t have to buy a whole new system. That’s something to brag about, in specific terms.
Also consider any work-related award that might reflect your accomplishments. Did you win an achievement award for writing the “New Employee Orientation Handbook”? Why? Was it because supervisors found that new employees who read the book had a better understanding of where they fit in and how they could contribute to the company’s goals and targets? That’s an accomplishment! Don’t leave it out!
A final, brief note on listing both responsibilities and accomplishments: As you begin to jot things down, don’t begin your entries with “Responsible for.” Instead, use “action” words, such as designed, created, directed, handled, achieved, supervised, coordinated, or implemented for greater impact.
Just because you weren’t paid to do something doesn’t mean you didn’t gain valuable experience that should be included on your resume. You may be so used to equating “work” with “pay” that you are discounting key accomplishments merely because they were part of your volunteer activities. Did you manage the budget and purchasing for an organization’s fund-raising supper, recruit volunteers for the library book sale, or organize a musical program for the senior center? Organize a charitable car wash, direct other volunteers in a clean-up effort or paint posters and signs? Just because you didn’t receive a paycheck for performing these functions doesn’t mean they don’t count!
The less actual work experience you have, the more “work” your volunteer experience has to do on your resume. If you have little or no paid work experience, or if you’ve been out of the job market and are preparing to reenter, you have no choice but to “translate” your volunteer activities into “work experience.” List responsibilities, accomplishments, honors, and awards just as if they were “real” jobs. And quantify results wherever possible. Don’t create entries that are misleading or untrue, but be sure to take credit for what you actually did.
For example, did your campaign drive for the women’s symphony unit increase membership? How much? Did you serve on the committee that designed a community program for developing good parenting skills?
Here’s how you would feature these achievements:
• Recommended and organized membership drive for new women’s symphony unit; increased membership 35%.
• Designed, coordinated and presented “Developing Good Parenting Skills”program to fill a community need. Program has evolved into 150 volunteers and nearly 500 participants and earned state and county Division of Child and Family Services (Welfare) awards.
Don’t discount any contribution you may have made, even if you weren’t in a leadership role. Employers want to hire productive people. Your volunteer service will show that you’re an active person and enhance the chances of your resume landing in the “possible candidate” pile rather than the circular file.
For all but recent graduates, the educational listing will usually be fairly brief. You’ll want to include the name and location of each school you attended, date of graduation, and your degree or major area of study. If you didn’t graduate, note the years you attended the school and the type of courses you completed. For example:
If you’re a recent high school, trade school or college graduate, you may want to list a few of the courses you completed, especially if you have little or no work or volunteer experience. But don’t go too far afield. Just list those that apply to the position or field you’re considering.
You may also need to play up your school activities and extracurricular accomplishments. Were you president of the chess club or drum major for the band? Maybe you performed an audit to fulfill a class requirement. Whatever the case, include such information on your resume, and be specific about your accomplishments. For example:
•Led high school marching band to regional championship; won award for outstanding direction as drum major.
•Recommended new schedule for Big Ten chess tournament, which reduced travel time and lost school hours.
•Performed audit of company with 500 employees to fulfill class requirement; recommended new computerized bookkeeping software, which reduced data-entry time and provided more detailed reports.
You may also want to draw attention to unusual challenges you met, such as earning stellar grades while working nearly full-time to earn all of your college expenses.
If you’ve been employed for several years, your high school and college grades are virtually insignificant to a prospective employer. After 10 or 20 years in the work force, your experience and accomplishments should speak for themselves. Except for possibly ensuring you meet the minimal educational requirements for the position, most recruiters will barely glance at anything else you include under “Education.”
If you took some courses that aren’t related to your degree but are specific to your new career goal, go ahead and profile them under your degree information.
For example, while finishing your degree in agricultural economics, you took several électives in political science. Your major aside, you’re interested in pursuing a career as a legislative aide. Here’s how to get the best of both worlds:
Internships, co-op work, and foreign exchange experience
If you are a recent graduate, cite any internships, whether for pay or class credit. You’ll probably want to include your internship accomplishments under the Experience heading, but you can decide that later. For now, just gather the information. Here are some sample listings:
Many students are involved with co-op work experiences while in college. Again, your accomplishments may be best presented in the Experience section. However, if you decide to list them under Education (perhaps you’ve been in the work force for several years), follow the above example and substitute your coop information. Your co-op experience shows you’ll take that extra step to achieve your career goals.
Experiences as a foreign exchange student are also worth noting. Although they may not be related to your career goal, the fact that you studied abroad shows you are unafraid to confront new challenges.
3. Licensing, certification, and special skills/training
It’s important to list any licenses or certifications to show the employer you’re trained for the job, especially if you’re in a skilled trade, such as an airline mechanic or dental assistant, or a profession in which a license of certification is required, such as teaching.
While you’ll be listing your qualifications and accomplishments under another heading, this section gives you the opportunity to indicate when you received your training and/or certification.
For professional licenses and certification, include:
Name and type of license.
State (or states) in which it is valid, if applicable.
However, there’s no need to merely list attendance at professional or personal-development seminars, such as those that explain effective team-building techniques or how to enhance your self-esteem. No doubt you picked up valuable information from such courses, but just completing them isn’t necessarily a particularly noteworthy accomplishment.
If you served in the military, it should almost always be included on your resume (barring a dishonorable discharge or a prolonged stint in the stockade). Your special training and accomplishments are valuable, especially if they relate directly to your chosen civilian career. Many employers consider the discipline, character, leadership and team-building skills developed through military training to be a big plus, so the more you achieved (and the longer you served), the more detail you should include. This is especially true if your only experience is in the military.
Be sure to list the following information for each tour of duty:
Branch and dates of service.
Duties and responsibilities.
Awards, citations and medals.
Details of special training and/or schooling.
Specific skills developed.
Specific accomplishments.
5. Memberships and activities
Here is your opportunity to list any memberships and activities you haven’t already covered under Work Experience. Your activities don’t necessarily have to be career-related. If most of them are, you may want to consider using the heading “Professional Affiliations.”
If you are an inveterate “joiner,” don’t feel it necessary to list every membership. Taking up valuable resume space to list organizations to which you just send an annual dues check is questionable. And if any are religious or political in nature, you may want to omit them entirely. Why invite prejudice when you don’t have to?
Just focus on the ones you think would benefit an employer and those that are related to your career. As discussed earlier, employers are looking for “doers”— productive people. Your activities will show that you’re a well-rounded person with interests outside of work.
On the other hand, if you have little or no actual work experience but a plethora of experience with your church, synagogue, temple, or a service group, you may consider giving them more attention. What choice do you have?
(On the other other hand, you may agree with some resume experts who counsel omitting all such extraneous information. Personally, I would omit all but the clear-cut, career-related activities.)
Whatever you decide to include or omit, any listing should be current and brief. Just include the names of the organizations and any leadership positions you currently hold.
7. Specific skills and talents
You should include a section highlighting these if they are particularly notable and job-related, especially if they coincide with the qualifications posted for the job at hand. Whether you can type like a demon, design Websites in your sleep, speak a handful of languages, or are a scratch golfer, you should at least list every talent and skill on the forms on pages 23-24. For each, include:
Accomplishments related to it.
Some skills may be unimportant for many jobs but essential for the one you are pursuing. Are you a certified scuba instructor? A potential employer in the banking industry may not care, but if you’re interested in a tourism job in the Caribbean, that special skill could be a big point in your favor!
Two areas of expertise that virtually demand prominent placement: Computer skills and teaching or training experience. Obviously the former should be a key part of your resume if you are applying for any job that is highly technical. But computer skills are a plus no matter what career you’re pursuing or what job you’re interviewing for, even if they were not mentioned as a pertinent qualification.
Any teaching or training experience should be included, even if the “experience” was conducting a one-day workshop for your two-person department. The ability to present and communicate ideas is highly prized, and teaching experience of any kind will often be interpreted as a sign of leadership.
Were you the keynote presenter at an industry function. Are you often asked to speak at seminars or meetings? Have you authored a book? A journal article? An article for a major magazine?
While some professions would consider published articles an essential qualification for almost any job (college professors, for one), being able to tout a speech, article, book, or major presentation is clearly something a reasonable percentage of your competitors will be unable to match.
