Your resume is your marketing sheet. It concisely tells a potential employer: 

• Who you Are, 
• What you Know, and 
• What you can Do!

The following guidelines will help you to produce a brilliant resume. 

The best resume is one for which you generate the content, but if you’re struggling, help is available to package it brilliantly.

Length

Your resume should be no more than two pages, although there are exceptions. 

In today’s busy office, the resume screener and manager would love to have a one-page resume, so if you can say everything that needs saying in one page, do so. 

Otherwise, most resumes stick to an unofficial two-page cut-off. If you cannot say it in two pages, you are probably saying too much. You should know that if your resume is longer than two pages, it probably won’t be read.

 However, there are exceptions. Academic and scientific resumes are often longer than two pages because they are virtually portfolios. These kinds of resumes are referred to as Curriculum Vitae (CV), and include examples of professionally published work and research. You should only prepare a CV if it is specifically requested for a particular position.

A good rule of thumb is to review your resume and ask yourself if every statement helps potential employers learn something about you. If they won’t get any value from what you are saying, leave it out.

Proofreading

Never, ever skip this step. You must proofread your material very closely and then recruit some help. Often, when we re-read material that we have written ourselves, our brain recognizes it as correct, even if it’s not. 

Even keen spellers can find it difficult to see errors in their own work. 

The spell-check function on your computer is of some value, of course, but it will not recognize contextual mistakes, like using “hear” when you should use “here.” Don’t ask just anyone to help you with this step: ask a strong speller.

You can download a free version of Grammarly to your computer to help you with this function: 

https://www.grammarly.com/office-addin

Contact Information

All of your important personal data (name, address, and telephone number) must be correct. You can also include an e-mail address, but be mindful of the one you use. Sometimes, when using free sites like Hotmail, people tend to have very creative addresses. 

If you decide to use an e-mail address in your contact information, create one that sounds professional. 

Save the fun and playful names and creative addresses for your friends.

Objective

People often use the objective statement incorrectly. They say things like, “Looking for an entry-level accounting position.” This is a bit too vague. 

You should take it to the next level and focus on what you can bring to the employer.

 How about:

• A recent graduate who thrives in a busy environment and on challenging assignments seeks an entry-level accounting position.
• Recent accounting graduate with a reputation for exceptional work and focus seeks entry-level accounting position.

 Skill Summary

This is an optional section, but excellent if you have done similar work in many different organizations. It should include at least one statement that describes an achievement, and it should support your employment goals.

Work Experience

Use this section to highlight your most qualifying employment experiences. Put them in chronological order to keep them organized. Avoid wasting space. (For example, don’t include employer addresses.)

Also, avoid including information that could cause problems for you. For example, if you are posting your resume online, you will probably need to be discreet about the name of your current employer in case someone from your current workplace comes across your resume online.

Remove all references to salaries, along with any reference as to why you left your former position. 

Avoid mentioning availability dates as well.

Use job titles that will make sense to a potential employer. 

Avoid jargon here; if your job title was not descriptive of the work you did, change the language. 

For example, “WTC” means nothing outside of the company that invented the acronym, even though you know it means “Warehouse Technician in the Calgary office.” On your resume, it makes more sense to refer to that position as “Warehouse Technician.”

As a rule, include no more than 10 years of work history unless the previous experience is important. If you have not used a particular skill in the past ten years, chances are you will need to do some kind of upgrading before using it again.

Accomplishments

Depending on the type of work you have done and the contributions you have made, you may have a lot or a little to say about your achievements. You may want to list some of your achievements with your work experience, or you may want to list them in a separate category.

Businesses have pretty limited interests, most of which focus on profit. Your accomplishments need to show potential employers how good you will be at making and saving them money. If you keep that in mind, you will be able to easily select the right accomplishments to include. This does not mean that you should not include examples that cannot be qualified with numbers and dollars. It just means that you should quantify as many examples as you can.

Education

If you have recently graduated (or are about to graduate) and do not have much work experience, put this section ahead of the work experience section. If your experience is more valuable, then the work experience section goes before this section. Your highest educational achievement goes first in the list. Include courses and qualifications that you earned outside of school that support your application, like driver’s licensing, safety courses, workshops, and certificates.

General Style Tips

List the most recent experience first for each section. If you had more than one position with a company, list the most senior position first. Leave out irrelevant tasks or job titles.

Emphasize your accomplishments by using bold, italics, or underlining.

Include some comments about your work from a supervisor, manager, or customer (like an endorsement you might see on the cover of a book).

Include volunteer or community service involvement that supports your application. (Captain of the marbles team in elementary school does not fit here.) Exclude religious or political comments unless you are applying to a religious organization or political party.

Do not include references on the resume. Instead, add a line that says, “References available upon request.”

Check Up On Yourself

Before you send your resume anywhere, go through this list:

• Have you used short, easy-to-understand words instead of longer, complex ones that need to be looked up to?
• Are your sentences no more than 15 to 20 words long?
• Are your paragraphs under five lines?
• Do your sentences begin with powerful action words wherever possible?
• Have you weeded out all the jargon you possibly could?
• Has someone proofread your document?
• Is there a nice balance of print and white space on the page?