Composing Your Resume

When composing a well-written resume, a job seeker should first outline career highlights, accomplishments, goals and objectives. From this outline develop a concise, one to two page resume consisting of the following sections:

  • Contact Information
  • Career Summary
  • Work Experience
  • Education, Certifications and Training

Contact Information

  • Name
  • Address
  • Daytime Phone Number
  • Nighttime Phone Number
  • Email Address

The object in this section is to make readily available the information needed to contact you. Hiring managers and recruiters work during business hours, so do not make it difficult for them to contact you. A serious job seeker will either be available to speak or schedule a time to call back.

Career Summary

A career summary should be a brief and concise paragraph explaining the primary focus of a job seekers work experience and practiced professional skills. Use caution and tact to construct a to-the-point summary that explains what you have to offer, without taking the reader on a tour of you career. Do NOT describe your self as a "quick learner" or "fast study". Most hiring managers aren't interested in what you feel you can accomplish if given the opportunity to learn; rather, they want a brief overview of what you have accomplished and what you offer to them and their company.

  • Keep in mind yours will probably be one in hundreds of resumes viewed by the hiring manager or recruiter, so don't intimidate their eyes with a long, detailed summary.
  • For Information Technology professionals, this is a good section to mention the primary hardware and/or software tools with which you have experience.

Sample Summary

I am an Information Technology professional with five years experience as an Oracle DBA on Unix platform in a large manufacturing environment. I am seeking a similar position with a growing company that views Information Technology as an asset.

Work Experience

This section of the resume is of most interest to the hiring authority or recruiter. Always list work experience in reverse chronological order, and list the month and year you began and ended each position. If multiple positions were held within the same company, be sure to list all of them to show career progression within that company.

State the company, month and year position began, month and year position ended, position title. Give a detailed description of your duties and responsibilities.

Note any specialized skills used and/or learned while performing job duties. Give examples (if applicable) how due to performance:

  • Revenues increased
  • Money was saved
  • Efficiency was increased
  • Sales improved
  • Productivity was improved

Note any major achievements in direct correlation to job performance.

Education

Beginning with the highest education achievement, list all degrees (Degree earned, Institute attended, year of graduation), and certifications earned. Also list all pertinent training that has furthered career marketability.

What Not To Include

  • Hobbies
  • Non relevant work experience
  • Pets
  • Non relevant interests