Do's
- Sell your accomplishments
- Prioritize your experience to match job your current career path
- Eliminate less pertinent experience form more economical use of space
- Check dates to make sure they match up
- Provide full disclosure on education
- Provide contact information - make it easy for employer to reach you.
- Keep format / fonts simple and consistent for easy reading
- Fragmented sentences are alright in a bullet point format
- Print resume on white or light cream-colored paper
- Perform spell check on resume
- Use action words and not passive words to describe your work
- Stay consistent with tense – past tense on responsibilities unless related to a current job
- Check abbreviations on states – two letters with no periods
- Check for proper punctuation and grammar
Don’ts
- Misspell words
- Rely solely on spell check – “there” and “their” are spelled correctly and not found in spell check and based on context, one is correct while the other would be incorrect
- Overuse capital letters or bold wording and phrasing – it loses its emphasis
- Clutter your resume with multiple or hard-to-read fonts or formats that have the hiring manager looking all over the page to try and follow your work history
- Present an eight-page resume - keep resumes to one or two pages – depending on experience and profession, perhaps a four-page resume would be considered acceptable
- Provide salary information
- Provide sex, age, marital status, or any other personal information that has nothing to do with your experience and qualifications for the job
- Embellish your skills or accomplishments – they may get you in the door, but will also get you tossed out of the interview
