Resume Tips for Candidates:
A challenge in writing a resume is to accurately convey the right information to
represent one's career goals, particularly when the appearance of "being
overqualified" can be a handicap in a competitive job market.
Company leaders not only have more career-related experience but also tend to
have multiple skills that have been put to work in a greater range of
experience. For example, a person who is currently an entrepreneur as the owner
and president of a new company might have been a regional sales manager who was
also a vice president and who started out not in Human Resources but as an
Engineer or an Accountant.
The resume-writing challenge here is determining which experiences to emphasize
and which to downplay. A related task is knowing what to exclude. Some people
want to include "everything," but it is important to present only the most
important information on no more than two pages.
Resume tips for executives and managers:
√ If your resume has an Objective statement, make
it focused, interesting, and unique so that it grabs the reader's attention.
√ If you can sell yourself better with some other kind of section, consider
omitting an Objective statement and putting a Summary of Qualifications, a
Profile, or an Areas of Expertise section just after the contact information.
√ A Profile or Summary can replace an Objective statement if you mention the
target field in a subheading for the Profile.
√ Making a Qualification Summary long helps to position important information at
the top of the first page. Too long and it becomes a book and is unlikely to be
read.
√ Listing Qualifications (or Areas of Expertise, or Skills) in columns makes
them easy to alter when your target is a different job or industry. (Use columns
- do not use tables.)
√ Spend considerable time determining how you present your skills. You may wish
to use a "combination" style resume - but refrain from using a strictly
"functional" resume.
√ In the Experience section or elsewhere, state achievements, not just duties or
responsibilities. Achievements/accomplishments can be attention-getting.
√ In the Experience section and for each position held, consider explaining
responsibilities in a brief statement and using bullets to point to
accomplishments.
√ When you indicate achievements, consider boldfacing them, quantifying them, or
providing a separate heading for them.
√ When skills, abilities, and qualifications are varied, group them according to
categories for easier comprehension.
√ To tell something about a company where you have worked, try explaining the
company name and type of business.
√ Group positions to avoid repetition in a description of duties.
√ Use no more than two pages unless absolutely necessary. Format your
resume in a Word [.doc] document using a standard font. Refrain from
using color. Make certain that all revision and edit markings are removed from
the final copy. PDF versions are not well received by many recruiters ...
as are JPG and PUB versions.
√ Name your resume with your last name followed by your first name. You may add
some other reference, however a file named "resume" or "dad's resume" is not
helpful to the recruiter.
√ Do not use tables in your resume ... even headers and footers are best left off ... these things can come out scrambled as they are parsed with software into a recruiter's database.
√ Cover letters are best if included in the body of the email. They are seldom read when received as a separate attachment.
√ Ensure that your contact information -
phone numbers and email address is shown on the resume.
Resumes can be submitted [in a Word .doc format] to:
contact@cpaths.com
2008 - C-Paths