Resume 101: How to Write a Resume
By Natasha Aguirre, Owner/CEO
Resumes are meant to give a brief overview of your experience and skills and to highlight your accomplishments. Resumes have four basic sections: summary, skills, experience, and education. Resume objectives are outdated and pointless, so leave them off and replace them with summary of what you bring to the table. There are several thing that should be left off your resume, which I list in this post; and your resume experience should be in chronological order with you current or most recent job listed at the top of the page and your oldest experience listed last.
When you get into your experience you can do several things. I recommend to list any awards you've received first, followed by your most important responsibilities like supervising other employees or growing the company's revenue. Then, you should list your other important responsibilities, BUT this should only be 5-10 bullet points at most. Your resume is not meant to be a job description or list of every single thing you do at your job - just the highlights. You can explain your other responsibilities in a phone screen or interview if needed. If you're struggling to find things to include on your resume, view this post.
Resumes can feel strange to write because people aren't used to thinking about their strengths and how to market themselves to companies. However, if you can get over this and be confident in your abilities, you can create a resume with really strong content. Once you have the content done, it's about formatting and making the resume easy to read and visually appealing. Bold font for companies and job titles is great, along with italics for awards or promotions, but the majority of your resume should be in plain text and all the same font. It's important to stay away from long paragraphs which are difficult for recruiters to skim, and instead list skills and experience in bullet points, which are much easier to read.
Want to learn more about resumes? Download our free resume guides here!
