Improve Your Prospects With a Solid Resume

WorkWise Advice™
Mildred L. Culp

Develop a resume that will help put you to work, even in a field that doesn’t require one. Make it good. Make it stand out. Make it reflect how hard-working you are. Although resume styles come and go, employers respond better to well-researched, action-oriented information. Today’s market prefers a single, truthful page. Use your judgment. Don’t jam it.

Pack your resume with information that’s relevant to your future. Omit points that distract from your current objective. Do you want to coordinate projects? Then include information about being a server but omit a reference to painting houses—unless you want to emphasize what a hard worker you are.

Focus your resume by focusing yourself. Build an objective—your resume’s topic sentence—that’s broad enough to increase your options, yet narrow enough to guide your reader into reading your resume as you want it read. A good objective will also make distributing your resume much easier. You’ll know where it should go!

A typical objective begins with one or two generic titles of positions you’d like to have as your next assignment, such as “Project Coordinator,“ “Account Representative,“ or whatever fits the market for your background and interests. Be sufficiently general to open doors, but specific enough to be targeted.

Next, describe the kind of work environment where you’ll shine. Don’t so much target the size of the company as indicate its personality, such as “team-oriented” or “decentralized.” Finish your objective with the benefit you offer. This is the one piece of information that would make you stand out in a line of 100 people angling for the same job. Try “experience in meeting objectives,” “background in persuading people” (weren’t you in the Debate Club?) or “skill in turning around difficult customers” (i.e., some angry people in your dorm). Be thoughtful. Impossible? Then you aren’t focused, which is going to make writing a targeted resume and hunting for a job more difficult. But don’t give up.

If you don’t know what you want to do, identify three departments where you’d be willing to work, say sales, accounting and customer service. Instead of using a standard objective, draw a band of parallel lines under the heading on your resume, and insert the departments, like this:
______________________________________________________________________

SALES * ACCOUNTING * CUSTOMER SERVICE

______________________________________________________________________

The third department may be a throwaway, just reflecting skills you’re willing to use on the job. Put department names in bold. If you don’t like the asterisks, use bullets or dashes. Now you can conveniently hunt for several different kinds of jobs in a single organization. As your work progresses, you may use this format to reflect your growing skill bank.

Then, research each job you’ve had that’s relevant to your search. Write a scope (summary) statement suggesting the breadth of your responsibilities. Use numbers. For example, if you cashiered at the bookstore, you might say, “Processed purchases of up to $400 from as many as 15 people per hour.” List your accomplishments to meet your readers’priorities. Don’t oversell.

Decide what kind of format to use. A reverse chronology, with your current job first, works best if you’re currently employed and have a solid work history, for a student. Otherwise, organize your information functionally, with a chronological section entitled “Experience,“ so that your reader will be impressed with your accomplishments before seeing weak spots in your history.

Create some headings, such as “Projects” or “Communication” that will tie your information together. Open each paragraph with your most important information. Close with the least important. That way, if a reader doesn’t get to the end of paragraphs, at least he may read the critical information. Present information clearly and in the language of the industry you’re approaching so that your reader doesn’t have to think about what you say. Write clearly and directly, with vivid verbs.

Word process or typeset your resume. Copy it on a white, buff or pearl grey paper, unless you’re targeting an industry that prefers originals. Get matching envelopes and blank stationery for cover letters.

By building your resume systematically, you can create a strong marketing tool. It teaches you what you have to sell and sells to employers when you’re not there.