Recruiting Blog

Seven Essential Tips to Make Your Resume Shine

Kids, it’s almost that time of year again; Career Search Season is nearly upon us, and I want you to be sure that your resume is as excellent as possible!  Resumes really do have a lasting impression on a company employee.  I have been reading over applicant resumes for three years now and would like to share with you my Top 7 Most Horrific Resume Don’ts of All Time (Ok, some of these really aren’t that bad, but they are irritating to the reader, which can negatively affect our perception of you, which is never good for you!)  In no particular order, here are seven useful tips on what to do and not to do to your resume.

1. Always list the applicable date ranges for every job you include in your employment history.  Did you lead that 3-person team for three years or two days? We won’t know unless you tell us!

2. Please don’t describe all of the activities you were involved with in high school, or even earlier than that.  If this is your first or second job out of college, sure- you can tell me about everything you did in college, plus maybe one or two shining accomplishments from high school (i.e. state basketball champions).  Do not tell me about your Science Club, French Club, Equestrian Club, and Chess Club involvement in high school.  And please- you do not need to mention that pony trophy you won in the sixth grade (true story).  Although it will make me giggle, it does not show me the kind of person you’ve grown up to become.

3. Make sure your font is clearly legible.  If the font looks anything like cursive handwriting, please avoid it like the plague.  Good fonts include Arial, Verdana, and Calibri.  In size 8 or above.  (I once had a size 4 resume.  Needless to say, on a hard copy, it was illegible.)

4. Use spell check AND read through the document to check for spelling errors yourself.  Mistakes like using the wrong “to” or “there” do not always appear as errors.  Neither do mistakes such as leaving the “t” off of “this” or “the.”  Dangling letters like “y” and “b” also do not register with spell check. 

5. Don’t trust the grammar check to fix everything for you- it’s not your English teacher.  Try to have at least one other person read over your resume for silly grammatical errors before handing it over to an employer.  Oftentimes when we read over our own documents, we read what we WANT the document to say, not what the document actually says.  For example, “Planned and executed three executive and training sessions” has an “and” that your brain might not register as being there, if you don’t want it to be there.

6. Limit the resume to one page.  You CAN do this- I promise. 

7. Use strong action verbs like “managed,” “authored,” “developed,” and “organized,” instead of weaker, nondescript verbs like “did” and “made.”  And please, please, please leave “get” out of your resume.  There is always a clearer word to use in “get’s” place.

We look forward to reading your excellent resumes this fall!