How to Make a Resume

Edited byMelissa Padrick

A resume is an advertisement about you. It should highlight how your skills, experience, and achievements match to the requirements of the job you want to get. What you include on your resume and how you organize your information will be different for each job. To make a resume that gets you a job interview, you have to decide which style of resume is most appropriate, and then only include information that the employer will find relevant. Determining the right style and creating a winning resume can be easily done if you follow these simple steps.

Steps

Chronological Resume

Determine if a chronological resume is right for you. A chronological resume is best for those who have mostly worked in the same field throughout their career and can show a steady progression up the ladder (each job is a step-up from the last). For example, someone who has worked as a receptionist, then as a legal secretary, and is now a paralegal may want to choose a chronological resume when applying for a new job. The focus of this type of resume is job experience.

1. List your employment history. Your jobs should be listed in order with the most recent one first.

• Include the name of the company, the city in which the company is located, your title, your duties and responsibilities, and the dates of employment for each employer.
• Under each job description include a bold heading, which reads “major accomplishment” or “achievements”, and list two or three achievements or a major accomplishment for that position. For instance, you could list ways you saved the company money, made the office run more efficiently, or brought in new clients or customers. For example, you could include information on how you, “implemented a new filing system that saved $1.50 per client in supply and labor costs.”

2. Provide information on your education.

• If you attended more than one college, university, or training program, list the most recent one first.
• For each institution, include the name, city and state, and the degree or certificate you received.
• If you had a cumulative grade point average (“GPA”) of 3.5 or better, list it as well.
• If you did not attend college or trade school, do not include your high school education; including high school information on your resume doesn’t look professional.

3. Add additional sections as needed. Because a resume is unique to each person, you may want to add additional sections in order to highlight something that makes you stand out as the right candidate for the particular job. For example:

• If you have job specific skills, list them in a section titled ‘Special Skills.’
• If you are bi-lingual and the job favors those who speak more than one language, list the languages in which you are fluent under “Other Languages”.
• If being computer literature is important to perform the job well, create a ‘Computer Skills’ section and list all of the programs, applications, and programming languages you know how to use.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1074