Tuesday, June 15, 2010

One or Two Page resume? Depends...

This question has been kicked around for as long as I've been looking at resumes and I'll be candid, if you don't have something compelling on your resume to share with a prospective employer it really doesn't matter.

If you're a recent grad and have no industry experience one page should do and even that might be challenging to fill unless you have a list of special projects. Don't be afraid of two if you have enough professional breadth and depth but in both cases, you have between 10 and 30 seconds to get the reader interested.  If you lose them you'll likely also lose any opportunity with the company. 

What are you currently doing, how will it benefit your next employer, what relevant tools/technologies were involved, who have you worked for, in what capacity and how long were the engagements?  These and education are what they're really interested in seeing.  With respect to education, my suggestion is within a year of graduation, (BS/BA, MS, MBA, PhD) list it near the top of your resume and after you've been out a year move it to the bottom.

As for formatting stick with chronological over functional because functional makes it harder to connect the dots and see what you did, when and where. 

Start with your name and contact information, add a few modest career 'highlight' bullets to give a sense of your achievements (do go easy on the fluff), follow with company names, employment dates, titles you held and a brief one-paragraph description of what you actually did during your time there including any significant contributions, tools and/or technologies used.  This is the 'meat' of your resume and what most hiring authorities are focused on, so make sure it accurately reflects your work and accomplishments.  Sure, some people are into pedigrees and big name shops but even satisfying those won't get you the nod if the work you did or the tools/processes you used aren't transferable.

When you're finished do NOT forget to proof read it, checking your grammar, spelling and punctuation.  Spell check won't catch 'to' and 'you' even though you mean 'too' and 'your' but the person reading your resume probably will...vinny

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