Copyright Stefl-Mabry, 2006 Resume Basics Joette Stefl-Mabry, Ph.D. September 19 th, 2006.

Copyright Stefl-Mabry, 2006

Resume Basics

Joette Stefl-Mabry, Ph.D.

September 19th, 2006


Presentation Highlights

• Resume Formats– The Functional Format– The Combination Format– Customizing Formats to Highlight Your Strengths

• Details that Matter: Your Resume from Top to Bottom: Crafting Language and Style

• Effective Resume Design– Designs that Communicate– Type Styles and Sizes


Chronological Format

Most traditional and still most popular– Your name and contact information – address, phone, cell

phone, email, etc.– The headline—either your job objective, a summary of your

background & skills or both– Your work experience—listing each job you’ve had, starting with

your current or most recent position, with a description of each– Your educational background– Other information

• Personal interests and activities• Certifications and licenses• Honors and awards• Professional organizations• Speeches and publications• Language Skills


Functional Format

Second most popular resume style. De-emphasizes chronology in favor of a focus on skills (talents, knowledge, and personal qualities you offer). Usually organized by job function:

• marketing, • leadership, • administration, • technical procedures, etc.


Functional Sequence• Your name and contact information – address, phone,

cell phone, email, etc. • The headline—either your job objective, a summary of

your background and skills, or both• Your job skills, listed under a heading such as “Profile,”

“Professional Skills,” “Notable Accomplishments,” etc.• A brief summary of your work experience—starting with

your current or most recent position, but with little or no description

• Your educational background• Other information, if relevant: personal interests and

activities, certifications and licenses, honors and awards, professional organizations, speeches and publications, and language skills


Functional Resume Opportunities

• Allows you to group accomplishments by functional area rather than by job.

• Makes it easier for you to suggest how skills from one field or industry can be transferred to another.

• It de-emphasizes chronology and career progression in favor of the package of skills and knowledge you currently have to offer.


Functional Resumes

Are most popular among:• Recent graduates or those returning to the work

force who need to highlight the skills and experience gained in volunteer, part-time, or other informal types of work.

• Career changers who need to show how their skills from one industry and be applied to another.

• Those with irregular career patterns, including periods of unemployment or self-employment, or job shifts that appear to be steps backward or sideways rather than “forward.”


Combination Format• Your name and contact information—address, phone,

etc.• The headline—either your job objective, a summary of

your background and skills, or both• Your job skills, listed under a heading such as “Profile,”

“Professional Skills,” or “Notable Accomplishments”• Your work experience—listing each job you’ve had,

starting with your current or most recent position, with a description of each

• Your educational background• Other information, if relevant, including personal

interests and activities, certifications and licenses, honors and awards, professional organizations, speeches and publications, and language skills.


Advantages/Disadvantages of Combo

• It allows you to highlight skills that your next employer is seeking and to demonstrate the logical progression of your career from one job to the next.

• Its relative complexity may make it hard to absorb, demanding significant attention and energy on the part of a reader.

• It may appear repetitive, since some of the same accomplishments and credentials may need to be mentioned in both the skills-summary and the work-experience sections of the resume.


Choose Chronological *If*

• Your career progression is clear and logical and seems to lead naturally to your great next job.

• The skills and knowledge you’ve developed and used in your recent positions will be readily apparent and understandable to any prospective employer.

• Your recent employers and/or job titles are the single most impressive credential you have to offer.


Consider Functional *If*

• Your career progression includes time gaps, steps backward or sideways, or detours into unrelated businesses.

• You’re a recent grad, someone reentering the work force, or a career changer.

• You’ve developed an impressive array of skills in a series of seemingly irrelevant or unimpressive jobs.


Consider the Combination *If*

• Your career progression includes both powerful elements (such as a great company or title) and apparent weaknesses.

• The link between your recent positions and the great next job you seek is real but less than obvious.

• You have both valuable skills and impressive career experiences to offer as credentials.


Each of the three classic formats can and should be customized to show off YOUR credentials to the best advantage.


Customizing Formats to Highlight YOUR Strengths

• Rearrange the sequence of sections to bring forward an area of strength -- push back an area of weakness.

• Expand the coverage of a strength and reduce the coverage of a weakness—or even eliminate it altogether.

• Use typographic highlighting (bullets, capital letters, bold face, italic style, or a larger font) to emphasize key strengths.

• Insert an unusual or unique resume heading to emphasize an area of strength.


Words that SHOUT: “HIRE ME!”

A resume is an advertisement for YOU – designed to highlight your strengths as an employee and to entice a recruiter into interviewing you.The ultimate purpose is to get a job offer – but its immediate purpose is to get the reader to take the next step on the road to hiring you (to call you and schedule an interview).You are in an intensely competitive environment – millions of resumes are in circulation and the recruiting office you apply to probably sorts through thousands.


Crafting Language and Style

To excite, impress, and entice the reader.

• Sell benefits, not features– A feature is any positive quality of a product

or service. – A benefit is what the feature can do for you. – Describing benefits answers the consumer’s

“So what?” question; they explain why the feature is important and valuable and what good the “consumer” will get from it.


Feature/Benefit Examples• Feature: Reorganized sales and marketing department

at Acme Company• Benefit: Reorganized sales and marketing department

at Acme Company, cutting expenses by 30% while doubling sales in two years.

• Feature: Managed development of tools for measuring divisional quality performance.

• Benefit: Managed development of quality production cost overruns by more than $200,000.

• Feature: Designed and implemented in-service training program to instruct teachers on recognizing signs of child-abuse in students.

• Benefit: Designed and implemented teacher training program on child abuse that helped staff successfully resolve three abuse cases in a six-month period with no legal liability.


Turn Lemons Into Lemonade

• Turn a negative into a positive by “reframing” it – place it into a different context or “frame”.

• This is a crucial skill for any job seeker whose background contains something that could be viewed as a “problem” – which includes almost everyone!

• Emphasize the positive (or at least neutral) side of almost every career experience you’ve had.


Word Spin

• Use active words– Weak: Was a leader of a product

development team that was able to complete its projects in less time than scheduled.

– Powerful: Led a product development team that consistently beat project completion schedules.

– Typically, verbs that are forms of the verb to be are less compelling and forceful than other verbs-and deserve to be discarded/avoided.


BE CONCISE!

• Concise comes from a Latin word that means “to cut,” and for most people conciseness in writing is achieved only through cutting-figuratively, that is.

• After drafting your resume - trim, prune, condense, and cut.

• Remember most recruiters and employers only can afford to spend seconds on an initial scan of the average resume, therefore…


Things to Avoid

• A resume that appears wordy, difficult, or time-consuming to read.

• When needless words, phrases, and sentences or unhelpful details festoon a resume, this increases the chance that important compelling ideas will be “lost.”

• A verbose resume is likely to convey an image of the job seeker as inefficient, time-wasting, or self-important—impressions that can only hurt your chances for an interview.


One-Page Myth

• If your background and skills, and qualifications are such that two pages are needed to describe them, that’s fine.

• No recruiter or employer will reject your resume because it goes to two pages.

• Here are some ground rules to consider:


Resume Length

• If you’re a recent graduate or otherwise seeking your first “real” job, stick to a single page.

• If your resume runs lightly over one page, try altering the style and format to trim it back.

• One and a half pages is more appealing than two solid pages.

• Avoid stretching onto a third page.• If a lengthy list of special details is essential

consider treating it as an addendum rather than as part of the resume proper.


Addendum Examples

• A list of scholarly articles or other writings related to your field of work.

• Speeches, seminars, or presentations you’ve given in your career field.

• A list of clients or projects you’ve handled.• A list of jobs you’ve successfully managed.• A list of films, recordings, software programs, or

other works you’ve helped to create.• Exception: In academia, the longer CV

(Curriculum Vitae) is usually appropriate.


Delete

• Pronouns and articles (I, we, he she, they, me, my them, and their – a, an, and the).

• Needless words and phrases – instead try to use a single effective verb.

• Avoid “hidden redundancy” – when a word or phrase needlessly repeats an idea that is clearly implied elsewhere in the sentence:Currently ranked as the company's top sales

producer in the country. • The words “ranked as” are unnecessary – as is

“currently”.


The Devil is in the Details

• Name and Contact Information– Give your name in the form you most often use. The resume is

NOT a legal document, if you don’t usually use a middle initial or name – don’t.

– Positively consider a nickname if your name is long and unfamiliar to most Americans. Although I have some issue w/this recommendation –the objective is to eliminate any awkwardness for the interviewer who may feel embarrassed over not knowing how to pronounce your name.

– Honorifics such as “Mr.,” “Miss,” “Mrs.,” and “Ms.” are not necessary and should be omitted from your name on your resume. If you have a “unisex” name – Kim, Sam, Jean – try to consider adding “Mr.” or “Ms.” so that the interviewer doesn’t guess wrong.


Contact Information

• Home address: give a street address instead of (or in addition to ) a P.O. Box Number.

• If you are moving or dividing your time between two residences, give both addresses with dates.

• If you are located outside the U.S.A., make the contact data crystal clear.

• Consider adding a line under your phone number such as (5 hours earlier than EST) if such is the case.

• Remember the idea is to make life as easy as possible for the recruiter to contact you.

• If possible include fax number and e-mail address


WORK EXPERIENCE or PROFESSIONAL HISTORY or CAREER TRACK

• Omit obvious qualifiers such as “challenging” and “responsible”.

• Dates Employed– Provide starting and ending dates, giving either the

month or year or simply the year:• March, 1992-July, 1995• 1992-1995

• Company Name and Location – Give full, formal name. – Usually you can omit street addresses and similar

details. – If you worked at two or more locations list both


Title Held Options

Option 11999-2003 Mammoth Chemicals, Inc., Princeton, N.J.

Research assistant, associate research coordinator, senior research coordinator.

Option 2Mammoth Chemicals, Inc., Princeton, N.J.

1999-2003 Research assistant2003-2004 Associate research coordinator2004-2006 Senior research coordinator

Option 31999-2003 Mammoth Chemicals, Inc., Princeton, N.J.

Research assistant2003-2004 Mammoth Chemicals, Inc., Princeton, N.J.

Associate research coordinator2004-2006 Mammoth Chemicals, Inc., Princeton, N.J.

Senior research coordinator


Educational Background

• List educational experience in reverse chronological order, starting with most recent degree or program and working backward.

• For each listing include name of the school, its location, the subject(s) you majored in, the degree you earned, and the date of that degree.

• Only include H.S. if that’s your highest level of education or if it’s a “specialized” high school – i.e., Bronx Science, High School of Music and the Performing Arts, etc.


“Education” Defined Broadly

• College and graduate degrees• Continuing education programs• On-the-job seminars, workshops, and training

programs• College or university classes that you audited or

attended on a not-for-credit basis• Classes for professional certification or licensing• Long-distance, Internet, or correspondence

school programs


Education Ages

In technical fields computing education that is five years old is probably no longer relevant and can be safely omitted. If you’ve been out of school for ten years or more, you should limit the details you given about your college education; the name and location of the school and the degree earned will suffice.


Include

• Honors that reflect academic excellence or other outstanding achievements (member, Phi Beta Kappa, class valedictorian, elected president of student body, perfect 4.0 grade point average, portion of master’s thesis published in Journal of Comparative Literature (June 1996).

• Be selective! • If your degree is irrelevant, de-emphasize the

field.


Personal Interests and Activities

• Activities should suggest positive personality traits: intelligence and analytical skills; physical and mental discipline; leadership; communication skills; creativity; or social and civic concern

• The activities should be coupled with achievements of some kind.

• The activities should be interesting, unusual, or surprising in a positive way.

• The activities should not be controversial from any mainstream political, ethical, or religious point of view.


Include If Relevant otherwise Omit

• Certifications and licenses

• Honors and awards – IF they are relevant

• Professional organizations

• Speeches, presentations, publications

• Language skills


DO NOT INCLUDE PERSONAL DATA!

• Age• Marital status• Number of children• Health status

All can trigger the prejudice of recruiters. And it’s illegal for employers to consider any in making a hiring decision.

• Don’t mention salary history• References are only provided AFTER a

successful interview.


Resume Design

• Be pleasant and easy to read• Contain sections that are clearly separated

from each other• Visually highlight the most important

elements of your background• Capture key concepts in concise, easy-to-

grasp paragraphs• Convey your strengths as a job candidate

in as single glance.


Design Considerations• Mix and Match Fonts – Spend Time on Design

– Distinguish between your resume’s body text and the headings (section titles and your name at the top –use different styles).

– Pick one font for the body text and use it consistently throughout.

– Consider using a serif font for the body text and either a serif or sans serif font for the headings.

– Use bold face, italic, and SMALL CAPS variations of your body text for headings.

– Avoid underlining, which often text that is difficult to read.

– Try using bold face to highlight key words (such as impressive company names or dollar amounts linked to accomplishments.


Choosing Type Sizes• Begin by formatting the entire resume using 12-point

type• Set the page margins at one inch (top and bottom) and

1.25 inches (left and right). Use one blank line to separate resume sections

• Use preview feature to see how the resume will fit into one or two pages

• If you are using a two-page resume insert your name and page number at the top of page two. Make sure the page break at a natural division

• If the resume runs long try reducing the left and right margins to one inch

• If it still runs long reduce font size to 11• If still long, look for ways to trim words and phrases• If still long and you’ve tried everything try using 10-point

font


Lastly Remember…

• A single typo or spelling error can sink even the best-written, best-designed, resume.

• Proofread, proofread, proofread!• Don’t use an old-fashioned dot-matrix printer• Choose a paper that appears attractive and is high

quality. Rag content should be about 25% and a weight of 16 to 25 pounds (buy enough paper for matching cover letters and envelopes).

• Do not use any background pattern, border or other printed design.

• It should be either white or faintly off-white. • Paper should be standard U.S. business size: 81/2 by 11

inches.




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Copyright Stefl-Mabry, 2006 Resume Basics Joette Stefl-Mabry, Ph.D. September 19 th, 2006.

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