It seems lately we’ve had some awesome activity in our GISuser career center, with many interesting job postings coming through. Something I have noticed though is resumes being mis-directed. What I mean here is people sending their resume to the wrong email address (ie. they send to our info @ email address) the result of not following instructions provided in the job posting! Having looked at some of the resumes, it also becomes clear to me that many people are in need of help in creating an effective resume and cover letter to make their pitch. Common things I observe are emailed resumes that have little or no effort, appearing as if they are being mass distributed. These are emails that are being sent often with no clear, descriptive subject, no salutation, and a hodge podge of information dressed up as a resume – I can only imagine what HR people must go through on a daily basis!
It’s a little tough to generalize, however, as a rule of thumb the one page cover letter along with a 2 page (max) resume is typically the way to go and each submission needs to be personalized and designed for the specific job at hand. I recently skimmed some terrific information on developing a resume that works and picked out 10 items that a job seeker should keep in mind when updating/creating a resume. There’s no guarantees here, however, the following rules of thumb are useful and could make the difference for you – keep these 10 things in mind:
- Be positive, sell yourself, and be believable – this can be a challenge for the quiet type. Don’t be shy, sell yourself and boast your successes and wins
- Ditch the negatives and make sure you don’t fall into the trap of telling your whole life story
- Highlight your BEST skills and experiences – Look for ways that you can help and show off your talents just make sure your story is relevant
- If you can’t say it in a positive light then leave it out – remember, most of the time a negative can be spun into a positive
- Don’t get creative and wacky to get attention – Watch out for the temptation to use “cool” technologies like embedding a video or webmap into your resume, although sometimes it may work – be careful here
- Forget the colored paper and crazy fonts, have a clean layout with lots of white space – clip art is also a bad idea! You may dig the wild stuff but chances are good that the HR screener reading your resume is a suit in a corner office without a sense of humor
- If mailing hard copy forget the colored paper and don’t include props that attempt to get you attention or make you stand out
- Make your resume FIT the roll and tailor it for that specific job
- Before documenting, attempt to build a table/list of all your impressive achievements, attributes, and qualities (See Wordle below) forget the stuff that isn’t relevant and don’t use cliches
- As far as style goes, consider a “hybrid” format that is chronological as well as functional, listing relevant experience/history, along with your skills and achievements
Be positive, sell yourself, and use positive verbs
Useful weblinks: