Resume Tips

• CHRONOLOGY. Keep it simple and organised. Start with your most recent employment.
  
• LAYOUT. Use a plain, tidy font such as Arial. Use bullet points to clearly define your skills and experience.
  
• Content sells! Don’t leave employers guessing…include all relevant information about previous work history including projects you have worked on, their values, your role and the success you brought to the project.
  
• Quantify your experience wherever possible. Cite numerical figures, such as monetary budgets/funds saved, time periods/efficiency improved etc. Demonstrate progress or accomplishments due directly to your work.
  
• Begin sentences with action verbs. Portray yourself as someone who is active, uses their brain, and gets things done. Stick with the past tense, even for descriptions of currently held positions, to avoid confusion.
  
• Don’t sell yourself short. This is by far the biggest mistake of all resumes, technical and otherwise. Your experiences are worthy for review by hiring managers. Treat your resume as an advertisement for you. Be sure to thoroughly “sell” yourself by highlighting all of your strengths. If you’ve got a valuable asset which doesn’t seem to fit into any existing components of your resume, list it anyway as its own resume segment.
  
• Fill your resume with “PAR” statements. PAR stands for Problem-Action-Results; in other words, first you state the problem that existed in your project/role then you describe what you did about it, and finally you point out the beneficial results.
  
• Be concise. As a rule of thumb, resumes reflecting five years or less experience should fit on no more than two pages. More extensive experience can justify usage of a third page. Consider three/four pages (about 15 years or more experience) an absolute limit. Avoid lengthy descriptions of whole projects of which you were only a part. Consolidate action verbs where one task or responsibility encompasses other tasks and duties. Minimize usage of articles (the, an, a) and never use “I” or other pronouns to identify yourself.
  
• Proofread, proofread, proofread. Spellcheck – get rid of distracting red and green spelling and punctuation lines when using word processing software. Proofread your resume numerous times over at least two days to allow a fresh eye to catch any hidden mistakes.