- Focus the resume on skills. Describe skills employers are likely to find desirable such as writing, presentation and number crunching. (If there is a lack of employment experience, refer to any school projects that demonstrated those skills.) Relevant skills should be referenced in the descriptions of previous employment. Important skills should be listed at the top of the resume in a bulleted, three- or four item summary. Use action verbs.
- In descriptions of previous positions, list accomplishments not responsibilities. Employers know just because people are responsible for something does not mean they did it or did it well. Employers want to know about initiative and actions taken that helped the bottom line or mission. When describing accomplishments, quantify them as much as possible. Numbers grab people's attention.
- Convey how the company will be helped. As much as possible, the reviewer should learn how the organization's mission or bottom line will be enhanced. This information can be imparted directly in the cover letter and in the resume through descriptions of skills and experience.
- Order all information by that which is most important to the employer. List employment in this way: title; employer name; city and state; and dates of the employment period. Employment and education should be listed in reverse chronological order. For education, list in this order: degree; major; GPA (only if good); minor (if relevant to open position); university name; city and state; and graduation year.
- Make sure all details are correct. If even small mistakes are made, employers will consider them an indication of poor work quality and effort. Check the spelling, the capitalization and the punctuation of the entire resume. Check the accuracy of: the name and the title of the person to whom the resume is being sent; the title of the open position; the organization's name; and the address.
- Consider not using an objective. There is debate about whether or not there should be an objective. People frequently do not write them so they are relevant to the open position. Because of this, employers usually ignore them or, worse, are nonplussed by them. Keep this in mind if the decision is made to include an objective.
- Keep the resume to one page. When employers have to review many resumes, it is not unusual for them to skip long ones. In keeping the resume short, don't make the mistake of using a font size smaller than ten. Reviewers tend to be older people with less-than-perfect vision.
- Include a cover letter. It should be in business-letter format. It should include a statement about where the open position's advertisement was seen and its date. Write the letter so it is relevant to the open position. Employers dislike irrelevant cover letters, especially those obviously written for some other open position.
- Use references to technical terms. Many large companies filter resumes using computer-based scanning that look for such terms. Also, since human resource staff who review a resume first usually do not understand the technologies involved, they too filter resumes by such terms.
- Don't lie or exaggerate. Experienced reviewers will catch attempts to inflate qualifications. They can call former employers and read to them the resume's descriptions of job responsibilities. They can call schools to verify graduation rates and, in some cases, even GPAs. The resume is a record that will last a long time. A lie may not be discovered immediately, but it could be later.
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