Resume Advice

Shoulds

• Sell your accomplishments
• Prioritize your experience to match the job with your current career path
• Eliminate less pertinent experience for more economical use of space
• Check dates to make sure they match up
• Provide full disclosure of education
• Provide contact information—make it easy for an employer to reach you.
• Keep format and fonts consistent and straightforward for easy reading
• Fragmented sentences are alright in a bullet point format
• Print resume on white or light cream-colored paper
• Perform spell check on resume
• Use action words and not passive words to describe your work
• Stay consistent with tense—past tense on responsibilities unless related to a current job
• Check abbreviations on states—two letters with no periods
• Check for proper punctuation and grammar

Shouldn'ts

• Misspell words
• Rely solely on spell check—"there" and "their" are spelled correctly and not found in spell check and based on context, one is correct while the other would be incorrect
• Overuse capital letters or bold wording and phrasing—it loses its emphasis
• Clutter your resume with multiple or hard-to-read fonts or formats that have the hiring manager looking all over the page to try and follow your work history
• Present an eight-page resume - keep resumes to one or two pages - depending on experience and profession, perhaps a four-page resume would be considered acceptable
• Provide salary information
• Provide sex, age, marital status, or any other personal information that has nothing to do with your experience and qualifications for the job
• Embellish your skills or accomplishments—they may get you in the door, but will also get you tossed out of the interview