ResumeWriting.com

So now you have the final draft of your resume. That’s it. You’re done. Right?

Wrong.

Hopefully the resume we’ve just written will be a solid foundation to use to apply to every job you see. But every job is different. And every job application might require you to tweak your resume to make the best submission.

One of the biggest mistakes I see jobseekers make is when they send the same one-size-fits-all resume to each and every job they apply to. This is no good.

Employers like to see you’ve done your homework. And they have taken pains to describe exactly the sort of candidate that they want for the position. If you don’t tailor your resume to at least make an attempt to match the sort of candidate they’re looking for, then at best you won’t qualify and at worst you look like you’re not paying attention.

This doesn’t mean that you have to rewrite your resume wholesale each time you send it in to a new position. A tweak here or there might be enough.

Let me give you an example. [...]

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So, if you’ve followed my directions in this guide, your resume should look something roughly like this:

This would be the resume as one page:

And this would be the resume as a two-pager: [...]

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Chances are a majority of you have ended up with a multiple page resume. As I said earlier in this guide, that is perfectly fine. In fact, I would much rather see you go to two pages if your career history calls for it. Resumes of three pages or more are somewhat rare, but they do exist for certain industries and for people with extensive careers to cover.

How do you format your resume if it goes to another page?

Simple. You put another header on the 2nd page. The header on your first page looked something like this:

It had your name and your contact info.

One option is to simply copy this header a 2nd time and include a “Page 2 of 2″ or “Page 3 of 3″ statement in the header. [...]

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So that’s basically it. Your resume should be done at this point. But before I get to my summation and show you what your resume should look like in general, some of you might be wondering if there aren’t a few items I’ve forgotten to include.

Nope. I haven’t forgotten anything. Some people seem to think there are some additional details to add to your resume. But I disagree.

Here are my big three no-nos:

1. Personal Information.

So, you volunteer at your son’s school? Great. You love playing volleyball? Fantastic. You’ve been married for 14 years? Congratulations. [...]

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There are only a few more things that you could ever possibly need to stick on a resume.

One of the things that might be useful to some professionals would be a certifications section. Are there examples of special training, coursework or even seminars that you’ve participated in that might be important/prestigious enough to mention? If so, you can either add these to your education section, or you can create a separate Certifications or Training section.

Remember how I discussed a Skills section a few chapters ago? Another thing a lot of people like to do is put a skills section at the end of their resume. Here people might list general items that an employer might expect anyone to be familiar with, say, an ability to type or a familiarity with Microsoft Office software. This was more common 10-15 years ago when these technologies were still new to some workplaces.

I’m generally leery of a weak skills section included in a resume. If you feel it’s necessary to tell the employer how many words per minute you can type (for example) then you’d put that info here.

But here are some of the things people tend to include in a section like this, followed by my rationale for leaving this stuff out: [...]

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