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How to Do a Resume – Market Yourself in a Unique Way Around Your Natural Strengths and Talents.
How to Do a Resume – What is its purpose?Your resume has one primary purpose, that is – to get you on to the next stage of the application process - that’s it. That next stage could be an interview, a call back or the bin with the rest of the rejects. The person who receives your resume will typically give it a quick scan, decide if it’s worth reading thoroughly and put it in the ‘to keep’ pile or just file it away/throw it in the bin. They will then filter down the ‘to keep’ pile even more until they have a shortlist of candidates to call in for an interview.
Answer - By making sure your ‘marketing brochure’ is in the top 1-2% of all resumes received for the role. And how do you do that? By making sure that you only apply for roles that excite you, fit your career plans, match your technical abilities and that in which you can provide what the employers want in spades with your enthusiasm and natural talents. How to Do a Resume – Tick all the right boxesAs discussed in resume objective examples you can make sure your objective and entire resume ticks the right boxes by using the keywords from the ad you’re applying to. This technique is open to abuse and employers/agents are wary of that so you have to be careful and not over do it. Better still substitute the keywords with similar words you can find quite easily at thesaurus.com Learn how to do a resume that focuses on the employers’ needs and adapt your skills and experience to the role. Really read over the job ad taking as much info as you can from it. Do some research on the company if you know who they are. Put yourself in the employer’s shoes and imagine exactly what they would want from the best possible candidate to do the job most effectively and productively. Ask yourself why you are the best person for the job – really give this some thought – remember you’re shooting for the top 1-2% of all applicants. Whether you get a call back or interview depends entirely on how well you sell yourself here – you may not like the idea of selling (I know I don’t) but to stand out from the competition you’re gonna have to. Employers will act on the candidates who sell themselves the best as opposed to the ones best qualified yet this is poorly represented in their resume. - - Not a pleasant fact but a true one nonetheless.. which is why you need to know how to do a resume that sparkles! How to Do a Resume – The format – Functional vs. ChronologicalFor a computer job you’re going to want to focus on your strengths, technical skills and relevant experience. For this reason I recommend you follow a functional resume format rather than a chronological one. If you are changing career and have relevant experience then it may help to draw attention to your employment history, this is a guideline only. How to do a resume with the right format for you? That will depend on how much relevant experience you do/don't have. Do what will ‘sell your product (you) ’ the best using the most relevant and strongest points. The structure of your resume should look something like this: • Contact details Let’s break these sections down even more. Contact details: Use as little space for this as possible, do this by putting it all along a single line like so:
Name Address,City,State,Zip----------Phone Number------------Email Address Objective: Make this targeted to the role combining your skills and relevant experience with what the role requires. Read more about this here. Resume Objective Examples Skills/Accomplishments: The trick here is to highlight your relevant skills and experience along with any accomplishments that might help you stand out as an exceptional candidate. This will be a bulleted list which will expand on your objective points. Be careful not to be repetitive of your objective, look at your objective and divide it up into points that can be elaborated on in your skills section. Only list accomplishments if they are relevant to the role and enhance your profile as an outstanding candidate. As with the objective look at the job ad and meet the requirements, i.e. if they are looking for a junior helpdesk technician with knowledge of Windows XP/2000, Office 2000/2003, MS Outlook, basic networking, hardware, printing, call logging, good teamwork, able to think on your feet – put those (only if true – never lie!) in your skills so they look something like this: Skills and Accomplishments: • Strong knowledge of MS Windows Operating systems, particularly Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 Professional. If you have accomplishments that can augment your skills include them but whatever you do - do not lie or exaggerate – ever! Experience: Here you list any jobs you have had in reverse chronological order (starting with the most recent/current). Again try and highlight any relevant experience you have such as customer facing, teamwork, working under pressure and anything that shows the ability to ‘get the job done’. Education and certifications:
Hobbies and Interests: Do not give this much space at all, it’s debatable whether this can help or hinder your chances. I’ve had people ask me about my hobbies on my resume but very rarely. If you are a keen sportsperson you can put this down to indicate that you are in good health. You never know the company you apply for may have an active sports/social club that participates in sporting events. You can also put ‘travel’ down as an interest which would indicate that you would be happy to travel on business should they require that of you. References: ‘References are available on request’ is the standard here. You needn’t use precious space listing references on your resume. How to Do a Resume – Look, feel & presentation.An essential aspect of how to do a resume that really differentiates is impeccable presentation. Make absolutely sure you have no spelling or grammar mistakes. Avoid long clunky sentences and paragraphs, use whitespace to ensure your resume is easy on the eye. See that your presentation is consistent and professional looking, think in terms of the person reading your resume and giving it an initial scan. Give it a 10 second scan yourself and put yourself in the place of someone with 200 resumes to go through – then ask yourself the following questions: • Is the information I’m looking for immediately apparent?
To make it into the top 1-2% of all the resumes sent in for a position you have to present yourself in a way that does more than just list your credentials and experience. You have to sell yourself as the person for the job. Put yourself in the position of the person recruiting for the role, target your resume accordingly and give them exactly what they’re looking for straight from the word go – that is how to do a resume that will stand out from the rest of the pile.
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Your resume is more than just a list of your employment history, qualifications, education and career ambitions. It is your ‘marketing brochure’ that provides that vital first impression of your product – You. And we all know what they say about first impressions don’t we….. Here you will learn how to do a resume that makes a powerful first impression. 
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