BUSINESS ENGLISH

Resumes that Pop Off the Page

Either you have just begun a job hunt or you are already an experienced resumé writer, these tips may still be useful for you.
Employers will look at hundreds of resumés for a position. How to make your two-minutes with them count.

A. Pre-reading Activities

Answer the questions:

1) Have you ever tried to write a resumé?
2) What points did you include in your resumé?
3) What tips did you follow while writing a resumé?
4) What did you do to make your resumé look more impressive?
5) How did you know that you had written a good resumé?

Today’s employers often receive resumés from hundreds of job applicants, and they spend an average of two minutes reviewing each one. The more eye-catching your application materials, the better your chance of landing an interview.

Here are some tips for creating a stand-out resumé:

1. Lose the Objective

Listing an objective at the top of a resumé is a common practice, but it’s not the best strategy. Your career ambitions aren’t the chief concern for most employers; their primary focus is finding someone capable of doing the job. Instead of listing an objective, provide a specific and highly condensed summary of qualifications and then delve straight into your work experience.

2. First Things First

Which is most impressive – the names of your former employers or the titles of the positions you held there? Once you’ve made this determination, list the most prestigious items first, but be consistent. If you decide your title carries the most weight, give the title first for each of your past positions.

3. Emphasize Achievements

Perhaps the biggest mistake job hunters make when creating their resumés is listing a litany of duties for each position they’ve held instead of citing their accomplishments. Your actual achievements are far more compelling than your job descriptions. If you’re a web designer, for example, instead of saying you “redesigned company web sites,” you might try the following: “redesigned four web sites, adding animations and interactive features that increased traffic by 20 percent.”

4. Make It Pretty

Appearance counts, so pay attention to the aesthetics of your resume. Use high-quality paper, and strive for a simple but elegant design. One word of caution – unless you’re a designer, don’t be overly “creative” with the layout. It can make you look unprofessional.

5. Avoid Errors

Nothing puts your resumé in the “no” pile faster than a typo. Here are some classics: “Thanks for reviewing my resumé. Hope to hear from you shortly.” And, “Received a plague for salesman of the year.” Ask several close friends and contacts to review your resume before sending it out. They may spot problems your spell-check function did not.

6. Take the “Two Minute Test”

Along with having several close friends review your resumé, ask one or two contacts who aren’t very familiar with your work history to review the document quickly, just as a prospective employer would. Then ask them for their impressions: What information stands out? What can they recall specifically about you? If they remember the salient points, your job is done. But if key messages don’t come across, go back to the drawing board.
Putting together an outstanding resumé isn’t an easy task – the key is to think strategically and continue working on it until you come up with the best product. With perseverance and attention to detail, you’ll receive interview calls in no time.

B. Post-reading Activities:

Do you find these tips useful?

Now you have two resumés before you. Try to analyze them.

Are these resumés successful?
Do they follow the above strategy?
If you were the writer of these resumés what would you like to change?

Key to Analyzing the Resumés:

Resumé в„– 1

Bad Objective Statement: Janice C. Mitchell didn’t use the objective statement properly. As you can see, this applicant used the objective statement to convey the details of a sad personal situation, which is not what the statement is intended for. If she thought including this information would help her land an interview by acquiring sympathy votes, she was seriously wrong. Nobody wants to take on an employee that has openly revealed that she has personal problems that may severely hamper her efforts in completing tasks in a regular and consistent fashion, whether that be from a conventional office environment or out of her home working for an employer.

Wants Easier Job: Another serious mistake that the writer made with her objective statement was mentioning the fact that she wanted to slow down, that she wanted less of a demanding job. No person that’s in a position to offer an applicant a job wants to read a line at the top of a resumé where an applicant basically says, “I’m looking to slow down and relax for a spell while you pay me for it.”

Vague Descriptions, No Power Verbs, Inconsistent Punctuation & Poor Formatting: This applicant was vague in her descriptions of her duties with employers. She didn’t use a generous assortment of power verbs to describe her list of duties with employers. She wasn’t consistent in punctuation. Sometimes she ended her descriptions with commas and sometimes she didn’t. Her format and overall structural spacing was poor. She increased her indentations on some lines more than on others, which gave her resumé a choppy, ill-organized appearance.

Educational Background Missing: She neglected to provide a section outlining her educational accomplishments. Even if she didn’t have the opportunity to go to college and only completed high school, there should’ve still been some mention of what her educational background entailed.

Resumé в„– 2

No Examples of Experience: This applicant provided very little details concerning her job duties with previous employers. All we really know is that she was responsible for plant safety, inventory control, shipping and receiving operations for her last employer and for the previous employer she was responsible for plant safety and sanitation. That’s about it. There’s not much on her resumé to determine if she’s capable of performing the duties required of a home-based office support assistant.

Weak Objective Statement: Her objective statement was too general and just poorly developed.

Poor Alignment & Spacing: Her alignment or positioning of information wasn’t smooth. She centered her different title headers but then she left aligned everything else. This steady switching back and forth from center to left makes it difficult to follow information.

Excessive Bolding: The author of this resume took advantage of Microsoft Word’s bolding feature way too much. She should’ve reserved bolding for items that were important or deserved more notice on the page. If you quickly refer back to her resumé, you’ll notice that the applicant bolded her name, the numerous subheadings, names of companies that she worked at, cities, states, dates of employment, job titles and even the word diploma.

Sloppy Setup & Vague Dates: Also, this writer neglected to keep information that should’ve stayed to one line just to one line. If you refer back to her resumé once again, you’ll notice that she inadvertently allowed the dates of her employment to separate. The “From” years and “To” years ended up on different lines. Also, she’s very vague in her employment dates. She simply writes, “AXIUS/PENNZOIL, Jackson, MS 1998–2002.” The reader really can’t get a true sense how much time she put in with this employer because the applicant intentionally omitted the months. So from what’s on the resumé, we can’t really tell if she started work with the company early in 1998 or later the same year.

Excessive Capitalization: Another mistake that the writer made was that she overused CAPS. She typed her name in all CAPS. She typed the different subheadings in all CAPS and she also typed each company’s name in all CAPS. There was just way too much use of the computer’s CAPS and bolding features.

I hope what you’ve read will help you substantially as you sit down to write your resume. Hopefully you won’t repeat the mistakes in the above resumés and all these tips will help you to get an interview.

Natalya Plyugina,
school 44, Kaliningrad