Top 10 resume tips

 

image by sam-churchill

Jake Miller from the Wausau Daily Herald asked me to contribute the content for this week’s Top Ten list in the Business section of the Sunday Herald. Since Jake wrote and engineered the story that changed my local business component dramatically in March, The Job Seeker Makeover from Design Resumes, I was very happy to help him out with the list of my top 10 resume tips.

You frequently see lists of resume tips in newspapers or handouts or blog posts but rarely are they written by a professional resume writer and I often find them mundane. This was my opportunity to set the record straight.

You can read the list below and I thought I would follow up this post with individual posts on each item of the list so you can understand my reasoning behind putting the items on the list.

The Top 10 Resume Tips

Ordered in countdown order:

10. Make format interesting, readable.

9. Keep the font size at 11 Points (readable)

8. Focus the resume

7. Make your contact information useful – (cellphone and e-mail)

6. Use Power Verbs (brainstorm, accelerate, pinpoint, pioneer, or launch)

5. Implement a “selected Highlights” Section

4. Use a banner headline (Sales Manager, Mechanical Engineer, etc.)

3. Incorporate key words from your industry

2. Use quantifiable accomplishments

and drum roll, please…

1. Sell your value. Answer “Why should I hire you?”

If you would like to learn why I selected these in future posts, you can Subscribe to Solutions from Design Resumes & Thoughts from Julie by Email or join me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.

 

3 Comments

  1. Jim Connolly on November 22, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    Tip number 11 should be:
    “Hire Julie Walraven!”

    Thanks for the post, Julie.



    • Julie Walraven on November 22, 2011 at 4:07 pm

      Thank you, Jim. I really appreciate the endorsement! 🙂



  2. Julie Walraven on December 21, 2011 at 5:56 am

    I find that many job seekers have been taught resume writing by people who haven’t studied it. Resume writing has changed dramatically as has job search and people are still using styles from 20 years ago when a resumes rarely had strategy.



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Julie Walraven

Professional Resume Writer

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