Objective
The purpose of a resume is to convey credibility of your professional skills and experience based on work history, educational accomplishments, and previous job achievements to a potential employer. It is meant to be concise and personalized to illustrate your qualifications. Keep in mind, that a resume is likely the first impression of written work your potential employer will review and writing a quality resume will take time and effort.
Best Practices
- Limit your resume to 2 pages. This will hold the attention of the hiring authority longer, while indicating your ability to be effectively concise.
- Ensure contact information is current, accurate, and consistent. Use a professional e-mail address. Putting your exact address is not necessary – the city and state is enough. Include hyperlinks (i.e. LinkedIn URL) where applicable.
- Spell out degrees earned and include the year you graduated to tell the reader about your career journey.
- Customize your resume to the industry, company, and position you are applying for.
- Use a site like Grammarly.com to scan your resume for grammar and spelling.
- Save and send your resume as a PDF.
- Keep your resume a living document! Even if you are not job hunting, it is important to keep a record of accomplishments. Over time, those improvements and projects can blur into obscurity. Keeping track can also give you a sense of accomplishment in reflecting on your contributions to the organization and those around you.
Turn on Open to Work and review your job seeking preferences. This will increase your visibility to hiring managers and encourage them to reach out. You can do this confidentially (only seen from LinkedIn Recruiter) or publicly with a profile picture banner.
Formatting and Font
- If you decide to use an executive or professional summary, make it count.
- Keep your bullet points concise, simple, and as transferrable as possible. Focus on sharing your scope and accomplishments rather than your responsibilities from the job description.
- Highlight tenure, organic growth, and/or continuing education.
- Use qualitative data whenever possible to breathe credibility into your accomplishments.
- Use keywords, competencies, or industry acronyms where they apply. Spell out all acronyms the first time they’re used on your resume. This will increase your searchability on professional platforms.
Mistakes to Avoid
- Avoid using color. Use lines, italics, and bold font sparingly.
- Avoid using graphics or photos in your resume.
- Avoid spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
- Avoid inaccuracies about your qualification or experience.
- Don’t include anything that could lead to discrimination based on protected characteristics.
- Don’t include personal information such as number of children, marital status, and social security number.
- Don’t use personal pronouns such as I, we, me, us, they, and them.
- Don’t include “References Available Upon Request” – your employer will ask for them if they need them.
More Resources
- Research free tools on the Internet to help you build your resume step by step.
- For job specific templates, resources from platforms such as Indeed, may be more suitable.
TYGES Can Help
While working with one of recruiters, you will be asked to send us an updated resume. Your recruiter will review your resume and offer recommendations to help you get the first interview.
