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The Best Resume Tips For Anyone Beginning Their Job Search

Tips for how to format a professional resume.

Cameryn Sharkey
Jun 11, 2019
North Carolina State University
197
The Best Resume Tips For Anyone Beginning Their Job Search
Unsplash

Having an up-to-date and polished resume is super important for finding a job. Majority of employers require a resume during the hiring process.

As a college student who has attended an endless number of workshops and seminars about resume writing, here are some of the tips I found most helpful.

1. Keep it to one page

A resume is stressed as one of the most important documents about yourself. It is sometimes the first bridge between you and the hiring team of the company for which you applied. However, most potential employers will only look at your resume for a couple of minutes, maybe even a few seconds. This is just to give them a surface understanding of your achievements, the in depth explanations should be saved for an interview.

2. Bullet points

Try to keep your bullet points under each category as concise as possible. This is in part with the one-page limit and also will cut out any fluff. Typically two to three bullet points are good for each job, project, etc. you have listed.

3. Use action words

The way you phrase your bullet points is key to making a good impression. Whenever I update my resume I use words from "185 Powerful Action Verbs..." This list is a great source as it provides words for specific actions and categories. Make sure to mix up the ones you use though so that your resume does not look too repetitive.

4. Ordering your experiences

Education and work experience should be your first and second categories on your resume. Following that can be a mixture of your skills, volunteer experiences, achievements, and so on. This one is pretty well-known, but make sure that when you list your previous jobs, projects, etc. that you always order them with your most recent information at the top.

5. Education

Once you are in college, everything from high school should be removed from your resume. During your freshman and sophomore year in certain circumstances it may be okay to still include certain things, but you should be working to add new things to it to replace those.

6. Margins

In order to get more onto your one page resume, it is recommend to decrease/narrow your margins. White and empty space makes your resume look as though you haven't done enough.

7. Color and pictures

Pictures are not for your resume. Unless the employer asks for one (which I do not know why they would) do not include one. In regard to color, making your name colored is okay, but don't over do it. Stick to darker shades that won't stand out much and will also print alright if someone prints it in black and white. Dark shades of blue, green, reds are probably the best. If you aren't sure what color to go with, stick with black.

8. Fonts

There are many fonts to choose from that it may seem overwhelming. For your resume, keep it conservative. Save the curly, wild, and more unique fonts for other things. Resumes are to be professional so the best fonts to use are the standard defaults (i.e. Calibri, Cambira, Arial, Helvetica, etc.)

9. Dates

When you are putting dates with things make sure you standardize where they are located. Typically for lists of leadership roles, achievements, and involvement, there isn't much description so the dates are aligned on the right side of the page directly across from the corresponding experience.

I hope these tips were helpful. There are so many resources online to get more tips and/or even get professionals to check over your resume and provide feedback.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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