The Art of The Resume

The resume is the most powerful tool a person has to sell themselves to potential employers. But often times, even the brightest individuals fall short of standing out.

I wrote my first resume during my senior year of high school, and after many edits, revisions, and rejections, I can finally say I have tuned it to my liking. Within the past year, I've received more job offers than I’ve ever received before and I actually ended up accepting 2 of them. Now as I graduate college and start my full time role as a software engineer, I am compelled to share all the knowledge I have learned throughout the years; starting with the basics.

Before we start, ask yourself if you even need a resume to begin with. Certain careers, like humanities and arts, may require a strong portfolio over a resume for their hiring process. Also you need to check if you have enough content to put on your resume in the first place. If you’re in college but are not involved in any clubs, have no related work experience, and have no notable accomplishments, you should be investing your time on those areas instead.

Format

Resume templates available on Microsoft Word

To begin creating your resume, first pick a recognizable resume layout. There are great templates available on Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and OpenLeaf for LaTex. After picking a good readable format, follow these guidelines:

• Resume should never be longer than a single page.
• Keep white space to a minimum
• Have bold section headings
• Resume should be consistent throughout. The headers, text sections, titles, sub headers should all have the same respective font, font size, color, boldness, etc.
• Avoid adding a photo of yourself.
• Avoid trying to stand out with wonky, colorful, and uncommon layouts.

A good resume format should be easy to read, and allow your audience to skim through it swiftly and without friction. The reader’s eyes should be able to travel briskly, and not get lost. Don’t forget to always submit your resume as a PDF. Other file types such as .doc may have messed up layouts based on the application it is opened, such as Google Docs vs. Microsoft Word.

Education, Skills, and You

Next, let’s go over the header section. It should contain your education, skills, and your name. Remember that the header is the first section your reader will most likely look at.

• Have your name, contact information, location, link to your LinkedIn profile or portfolio. If you do not have a LinkedIn, make one!
• Consider putting your location as the nearest metropolitan area. I am from Springfield, V.A. but Washington D.C. is much more recognizable.
• Write ‘U.S. Citizen’, especially if you have a foreign sounding name or applying to jobs that require a security clearance.

Next part is listing the skills and awards that relate to your career and or the job posting that you’re applying to. Personally, I do not like this portion, because it’s hard to gauge proficiency by looking at a list of skills. For instance, if two people put down ‘Adobe Photoshop’ for their skills, its hard for the recruiter to decide who is the best skilled in photoshop. That’s why you will need to go in depth with your skills in the experience section to prove your competence. Nonetheless, having this section quickly lets the recruiter know if you align with the skills they are looking for.

• List all your skills, and awards relating to your career in alphabetical order.
• List all your awards, scholarships, merits, deans list, and so on.
• Avoid listing qualitative skills. No “excellent communicator”, “leader”, etc.

After that, the education section is simple enough. You must include:

• The full name of your school, and location.
• Degree, whether you’re a bachelor of science or bachelor of arts.
• Major and minor.
• Start date and expected graduation date.
• Campus involvement including clubs, fraternity, and societies; especially if you held a leadership position.
• Only include GPA if it’s higher than 3.4
• Avoid listing your relevant courses taken, as everyone in your major takes the same classes.
• Avoid listing your high school, especially if you’re an upperclassman.

Work Experience

Next, and in my opinion the most important, is the experience section! You need to include:

• Name of the company/organization.
• Title of your position.
• Location of the company.
• Start and end dates.
• Quantitative description of your experience.
• Listed in chronological order
• Consistent layout
• Avoid grammar mistakes and misspellings. This is more common then you’d think.

Work experience section detailing the experience at my previous two employers

Although you should show off, don’t go too far. According to a 2016 study at The University of Michigan, playing up your strengths on your resume is very important in getting hired but stretching the truth or bragging can be off-putting to employers.

Overall, the experience bullets should be short, concise, and as descriptive as possible. Avoid long sentences and paragraphs. This should be quantitative in nature and highlight your achievements, responsibilities, and how you did this job better than someone else would have.

A good quantitative description is the key to success. For example, which of the descriptions below sounds better?

• “Baked pastries and cakes in an open commercial kitchen.”

or

• “Responsible for baking 36 different types of pastries, while ensuring 95% on time delivery of goods and reaching daily revenues of $1200 on average.”

Displaying numbers and measurables are the key to highlighting your success.

The Rest

The last section is for your other activities. You can go over personal projects, clubs, volunteering experience, and any other involvement that you didn't mention earlier. It’s very similar to the work experience section.

All in all, pick a good readable layout for your resume, then focus on having a good quantitative description of your experience to stand out from other applicants. Don’t forget to re-read multiple times, your resume should never have grammar or spelling mistakes.

It won’t be perfect on the first draft, nor on the 30th revision. It’s a long process to fine tune it to your liking, but with enough effort I promise your resume will be monumental to getting the dream job you always wanted. Goodluck.