Resume Tune-Up: Making A Good Impression
In 30 Seconds

Contributed by Sheri Graves

First, the bad news: every time you submit your resume to a prospective employer, you're setting yourself up to compete with other job-seekers—maybe hundreds of them—who may be better at resume writing than you are.

Now, the worse news: your resume may not get more than 30 seconds of eyeballing by the hiring specialist whose job it is to select candidates for the first round of elimination.

Ready for the good news? You can make the cut.

To put yourself in a position to survive the dreaded "round file," think of your resume as though it were a 30-second television or radio commercial. It needs to make a favorable impression immediately. The product being advertised is you. The buyer is your prospective employer.

The format of your resume can be chronological or functional in style. The best resume is a combination of both. Interestingly, there are employers who prefer a chronological resume and will reject a functional resume. If it's possible, try to determine in advance which one is favored. Sometimes this can be accomplished with an e-mail to the company's human resources department.

Sample resumes are not hard to come by. Google the word "resume" online and you'll discover a wealth of information on resume writing. A number of software programs include resume templates which can be used as guidelines.

Sometimes the most successful resume is one prepared by a professional who specializes in such services. However, free resume assistance is available to everyone.

Under the federal Workforce Investment Act of 1998, state and local Workshop Investment Boards were established throughout the country to provide free, one-stop service to job-seekers. There, you may participate in resume workshops as well as undergo various other preparations for entering or re-entering the workforce. Your local site is listed in your telephone book. Look for the number in the county government phone listings under "employment services," "job training," "workforce resources" or "human services."

Before setting pen to paper, stop and think: Are you trying to sell your buyer yesterday's news? Or is your resume current? Before you can start on a resume tune-up, you need to update your information. Now you can mention all that computer instruction you've had since you last submitted a resume. Mentioning that advanced Photoshop® tutorial you completed last month could help you. Include the fact that you know how to use PowerPoint®. Note the leadership seminar you attended last week.

As you add new information, eliminate old news, particularly if the newer information indicates a higher level of skill. Nobody cares that you graduated third in your class if it happened ten years ago. Recruiters want to know: "What have you been doing lately?"

Once you've updated your information, made certain there are no crucial omissions, double-checked all the dates, addresses and phone numbers, and decided on a format, it's time to begin your resume tune-up.

Here are some tips offered by career counselors and job recruiters:

• For design, think "simple." Don't use fancy script, colored ink, colored or scented paper, heavy bond, elaborate layouts, charts, graphs, tables, boxes and templates. Choose standard fonts and standard white or ivory paper.
  
  
• For the content, think "brief." You're not writing a book. You're writing the equivalent of a book cover blurb. The purpose of your resume, remember, is to make the cut that results in the phone call to schedule your job interview. It's the interview that gets you the job. It's the resume that gets you the interview.
  
  
• For the text, think "uncluttered." Go easy on self-aggrandizing adjectives. Omit the puffery and jargonized job titles. This is neither a self-addressed Valentine, nor is it the story of your life. Your resume is merely a glimpse or snapshot of you as a job candidate. The idea is to make the employer want to meet you in person.

Your finished product should be an updated resume that's been brutally slashed to the inner rings of bare wood and then spruced up with key words specific to your chosen career path.

According to hiring specialists, many of today's companies have computer software that scans resumes for key words and phrases used by individuals with extensive knowledge and experience in certain areas. Sometimes, recruiters say, resumes are scanned by the computer first and only those containing selected key words survive for that initial 30-second glance by human eyes.

What are those coveted key words and phrases? This scanning technique is used, employers say, only for positions where job candidates already would be familiar with the jargon. In other words: it's a secret.

Scanning for key words and phrases is but one way to determine the first round of elimination when hundreds of resumes are submitted for a single job opening. There are others. Recruiters say these are some of the sure-fire ways to land a resume in the reject pile:

• Misspelled words and poor grammar.
  
  
• Factual errors, incorrect dates and glaring omissions.
  
  
• Missing contact information.
  
  
• Unprofessional e-mail addresses.
  
  
• Lies, misrepresentations and inflated titles.
  
  
• Inclusion of photos or graphics.
  
  
• Inclusion of personal information not relevant to the job.

One of the biggest turn offs for human resource personnel is the tiresome task of glancing at and then casting aside multipage resume after multipage resume of blah-blah-blah-blah. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph in a resume must serve the Primary Directive: make the cut to get the phone call for an interview.

Photoshop is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Incorporated in the U.S. and/or other countries. PowerPoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

About the Author:
Sheri Graves, an award-winning journalist with more than four decades of experience on daily newspapers, is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Rosa, California.