Many people believe that when looking for a new job quantity reigns supreme. Write a generic resume and send it out to as many organizations as possible in the hope that someone will take a chance on you. However, most well-run organizations consider a variety of things when reviewing a resume, making it important for a job seeker to ponder all of these things when writing their resume. To get a better understanding of the resume-writing process, I posed ten questions to Michael Howard, resume writer and author.
CharityVillage™: What are some key things to consider when submitting a resume?
Michael Howard: Remember that when you submit your resume to a potential employer, it is the submission process that provides their very first impression of you. You want to make sure that impression is professional and smart. Here are a few tips:
- Email address: Don’t use a work address, as you don’t want to send the message that you apply for other jobs while you’re supposed to be working. Also, make sure it’s professional and implies confidentiality (ie. don’t use xboxking@email.com or carterfamily@email.com).
- Subject line: If you are replying to a job ad, follow all instructions for applying. If there are no instructions, put the job title you’re applying for in the subject line.
- Body of email: I recommend using the body of the email for your cover letter, while others recommend attaching a separate cover letter. Either is fine, but remember that whatever you put in the body will either encourage or discourage them from opening the attachments. As always, pay careful attention to spelling, sentence structure, etc. Just because it is an email doesn’t mean you can be informal.
- Use PDF, not MS Word: PDF files can be viewed the same by anyone — the recipient doesn’t need to have MS Word installed. However, even if they do have MS Word, documents can view differently depending on the version or the settings the recipient is using, making your resume look unprofessional. Don’t take a chance, use PDF whenever possible.
CV: What is the best resume format to use?
MH: There are three widely used formats for presenting your employment experience — chronological, functional, and hybrid, which is a combination of the two. Most of the time you will want to use chronological or hybrid, as most employers don’t like functional resumes (resumes where the skills and achievements from all jobs are grouped together under common headings). The problem with functional is the reader can’t usually determine where the applicant gained that particular experience or achieved a particular goal. Having said that, there are more important things to consider than just format.
Always remember how hiring managers and HR screeners read resumes — they start at the top and work their way down, they tend to skim quickly because they’re pressed for time and have many resumes to get through, and as soon as they decide they’re not interested, they stop and move on to the next one (more often than not, that’s before they finished reading the whole thing). Keeping that in mind, you have to decide which of your qualifications will interest them the most. Usually it’s your current or most recent job, but it could be a previous job, school, volunteer experience, language skills, or something else. Whatever will be most relevant and appealing to them needs to be at or near the top, so they see it before they move on to the next resume.
If you think your language skills will be most important to them, put them at the top in a summary section or under a heading near the top called Language Skills. If your volunteer experience is more compelling that your employment experience, put it first. If your third to last job (ie. Volunteer Coordinator) is more relevant than your two most recent ones (ie. IT Consultant and Network Administrator), use a section such as Nonprofit Experience for your Volunteer Coordinator position, followed by a section called Additional Experience for your less relevant work. That will get your more appealing experience closer to the top.
In other words, don’t get stuck on following a pre-determined format. What’s more important is that your key qualifications get priority spacing on your resume.
CV: How far back should experience be listed on a resume?
MH: Resumes don’t have to include every position you’ve ever had. Typically you would want to go back 10 – 12 years at the most, perhaps a bit more if the work was relevant to what you’re applying to now. Employers tend to believe that accomplishing something 20 years ago doesn’t mean you are capable of accomplishing the same thing today.
What is more important than how many positions you’ve had is how much space is dedicated to the most relevant positions. Say you’ve had two jobs in the past eight years, and four jobs in the past 15 years. You may want to dedicate the most space to the two most recent jobs, and less space to the 2 before that. It’s okay to include older jobs, but you probably don’t want to dedicate half a page (of a typical two-page resume) to a job that you did 12 years ago, unless it’s the most relevant job you’ve had (and in that case you would want to move it closer to the top and downplay the dates).
CV: What are some ways to get a resume to stand out or get noticed?
MH: It’s important for a resume to appear clean, professional, and easy to read. A reader’s first glance at a resume will tell him or her whether it’s going to be an enjoyable experience to review that resume — even before they’ve read a single line. You don’t want to have one strike against you in the reader’s mind before they have even started.
If you want to be really creative, here’s a couple more ideas:
- Include a great quote from a reference letter, performance evaluation, customer letter, LinkedIn recommendation, etc. Third-party views of your performance will be trusted more than your own view of your performance. Offer a copy of the full recommendation/letter.
- If you’re fresh out of school or transitioning to a new career and you’ve completed a career exploration program, describe the results of your career assessments (if they match the field you’re targeting). Employers may be interested to know that independent career assessments have shown that your skills, interests, values, and personality align with the occupation and industry you’re targeting. This indicates to them that you’re serious about your career choice and you’ll likely stick around for the long-term.
CV: Should a person have a section for career objectives? If so, what should be listed?
MH: Typical objective statements such as “To secure a full-time position as a Volunteer Coordinator with a national nonprofit organization” are obsolete. Instead, use a title beside or under the name, rather than an objective statement. For example: Jane Doe, Volunteer Coordinator. By doing this you present yourself as a Volunteer Coordinator who is looking for a job rather than someone who simply wants to be a Volunteer Coordinator.
Additional headings for future career plans are usually not recommended. Hiring managers know that desperate job-seekers will say almost anything to get hired, so stating that “you’re considering starting a relevant educational program next year,” or “your goal is to become an Executive Director” on a resume or cover letter doesn’t carry a lot of weight with the reader. Resumes are for facts, and anything that may or may not happen in the future should be left out.
CV: Is it a good idea to include volunteer experience and/or hobbies on your resume?
MH: Volunteer experience can be just as valuable as employment experience, if it’s relevant. I know I use the word relevant a lot, but that’s what it comes down to. I should clarify — I don’t mean that employment or volunteer experiences that weren’t at all relevant to your job target should always be left off your resume (they could be left off, but they don’t have to be). I just mean that if something is relevant, then it should be given a higher priority on your resume.
Interests and hobbies are debatable. Some experts believe they should be included because apparently it gives the reader a more well-rounded picture of who you are. I disagree with that, and I rarely ever include them on a resume. If I do, I list them under a more exciting heading than Interests and Hobbies. For example, if someone is applying for a position with an environmental advocacy organization and they have a strong interest in the environment, I would use a section called Environmental Awareness, or something similar, where I would describe their knowledge and interest in the field.
In my opinion, using the bland “biking, reading, and spending lots of time with family” in an Interests and Hobbies section adds little to the credibility of the applicant.
CV: How long should a resume be?
MH: I believe the length of a resume is probably the single biggest mistake job-seekers make (other than focusing on opinions rather than facts). I see thousands of resumes a year, and am always surprised by the huge number of resumes with three, four, five, and more pages. I have read resumes that have had up to 13 pages!
A resume is not a listing of everything you have ever done, it’s a finely crafted marketing document that should highlight your most appealing and relevant qualifications to a targeted company. Therefore, it should be limited to two pages in most circumstances — if you can’t do that, you’re telling the reader that you don’t know how to be succinct. If you have an abundance of relevant qualifications, then perhaps you could go up to three pages, but that’s usually reserved for executives, professors, or other established professionals. Students and people early in their careers should limit their resume to one page in most cases. The theory “the more, the better” doesn’t apply in resume writing.
I believe Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Take the time to write a short resume.
CV: How should you showcase on your resume your knowledge of the company you are applying to?
MH: The best way is to use that research to show how you will fit in, and what impact you expect to make. It’s more impressive to be able to say something like this in the cover letter:
“I learned from my discussion with Mr. Doe that you’re considering starting a revenue development department. I have launched and managed similar departments with two major national nonprofits, and I am confident I can do the same for you.”
Rather than:
“I learned that you started in 1992 and now have more than 60 employees in 3 offices across the country.”
CV: What are the biggest don’ts when writing a resume?
MH: Don’t use opinions, instead focus on facts. Far too often job-seekers include statements like “excellent communication skills” or “exceptional leadership qualities”. Hiring managers aren’t going to believe statements like that just because you put them on your resume. Instead, highlight your achievements in past positions. These are perceived as more factual by readers, and they can derive the skills you possess from these accomplishments. Just listing a skill, without including examples of past achievements that demonstrate that skill, will not gain the reader’s trust.
Similar to above, don’t just focus on what you did (duties and responsibilities), tell them how well you did it (achievements). Some job-seekers just copy their job description and paste it in their resume. This doesn’t give the reader any idea of how well you did your job.
Don’t assume the reader knows anything about the company you worked for. I constantly see resumes with company names I have never heard of, and no description of the company. It’s very difficult to put the applicant’s experience into any sort of context without some idea what the company does.
Don’t overuse the business-speak. Write in clear, easy-to-read sentences.
Don’t make it too long.
Don’t write “References Available Upon Request” at the bottom. It’s old-fashioned. If employers want references (and they probably will), they’ll ask you for them.
CV: Do you have any final thoughts or advice?
MH: There are seven different things that could, and should, be included on your resume about past jobs:
- Company name
- Company description
- Job title(s)
- Dates of employment/promotion
- Scope of each position – what were you accountable for?
- Accomplishments — what impact did you have on the company? (These can also be considered duties because completing certain duties on a regular basis can be written as an achievement.)
- Recognition — how did your supervisors, peers, customers, and/or industry view your performance?
Most resumes include only 4 – 5 of these, leaving the reader to wonder about the rest.
Karl Noseworthy is a freelance writer from Newfoundland who currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario. He can be reached at karlnoseworthy@hotmail.com.
