Consider yourself a brand and your resume a sales letter that outlines your knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience!
Metro College provides all students with a course: Professional Development that provides resume and cover letter workshops, job interview practices and job search techniques. It is important to take the time to develop a resume that is an accurate portrayal of yourself as well as an advertisement of your knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience.
Top 6 Resume Tips:
- Avoid fancy resume layouts, fonts or other special effects and ensure your resume is geared to the type of job and industry you are applying to. For example, a Graphic Design resume could include graphic designs, but a paralegal resume should be much more formal.
- Ensure your resume is easy to visually scan! Most human resource professional will spend 10 seconds scanning a resume. It is important that your most vital knowledge, skills, and experience be displayed in a manner that can be easily seen.
- Prepare you resume in a simple format that can be viewed on most common computer programs such as Microsoft Word. Avoid using templates and tables as formatting might be skewed when the employer reads the resume on a different program.
- Set out your work experience in reverse chronological order, with your most recent work experience listed first (this also applies to the education section of your resume).
- Use bullet points when appropriate. This is commonly done when describing various duties and accomplishments in prior work experience.
- Include important (industry specific) keywords in your resume. These keywords can usually be found in the job advertisement, and by examining the business website.
BONUS TIP: Do not include a personal photo in resumes; although this is a common practice in other countries, it is discouraged in Canada.
Resumes should be constantly revised and updated during your career. Don’t wait until you are on the job hunt to work on your resume, keep it updated as you gain new work experience and education!
Have you already perfected your resume? Move on to other items related to your job search including: