I'm Out of Work, I Need a Job
Custom Search
Designing Your Resumé to Grab Employers' Attention
Job hunting can be one of the most exhilarating and most agonizing experiences in life. While you may look forward to moving onward and upward in your professional life, needing stand out from other highly-qualified candidates can be the source of intense anxiety.
Your resumé is the first contact your potential employer has with you. A well formatted and well-written resumé can make a difference between getting the interview and the job, or being passed over. Particularly in a weak economy, most employers receive a stack of resumés of qualified candidates and make a quick scan through them before deciding whether or not to give them a serious read. You only have a few seconds to make a lasting impression. Thus you must design your resumé to be attractive to the eye, even in a cursory reading.
One mistake in resumé design is using the pre-made templates that come with Microsoft Word. While these templates do provide quick, easy to follow tools to create your resumé, they do not reflect the most current practices in resumé construction, and as a result will make your resume appear dated and generic. Additionally, while these templates will appear properly formatted within Microsoft Word and when printed, there is no guarantee they will translate well when emailed or uploaded to job search engine web sites. Your resumé could easily turn into a garbled mess of text, simply because the software your recipient uses does not recognize important formatting codes.
Another common mistake in resume design is the inclusion of graphics on the page. Your picture or any kind of logo is not appropriate for a resumé. Including anything other than plain text will make you stand out, but not in a good way. Instead, it makes the employer think you are not taking yourself seriously as a professional.
You can find samples of resumés in current styles on the Internet. Make sure search for resumés by your industry to find templates that make the best sense for the job you are seeking, and will fit with what employers are expecting to see. Then work on a blank page to replicate the look and feel of the resume you like.
The following are basic formatting rules for your resume:
- Limit the length of the resume to two pages.
- The page should have one-inch margins, top and bottom, right and left.
- Use left justification only. As a rule, do not center the content of your resume.
- The font and font size should be consistent.
- The bullet points should be basic: use circles or squares, but never any symbols that may not translate well when you email your resume to your potential employer.
- Headlines can be in all caps; the remaining text should not have special formatting.
- Do not underline any of the information in your resume. In the world of Internet driven job applications, underlining in a document implies a web link.
- The font size for headlines should not exceed 14 points; the remainder of the text in the resume should not exceed 12 points.
- Use the Tab key instead of the Space bar to create spaces between the text in your resume.
When you have finished formatting your resumé and have it looking as good as you can make it, ask friends or family for help in reviewing it. Send your resumé via email to a few of your friends, both as an attachment and in-line within the body of an e-mail. Ask them to review the resumé and make sure nothing seems out of place. Print out the resume on paper and have someone look it over to make sure that margins are accurately set, and that the content doesn't appear crowded on the page. Keep in mind that when it comes to your resume that a sleek simple appearance and great writing will get you the job you are seeking.
