Proper layout for a resume
Name
(No photo!!!! I seriously shouldn't even have to say this.)
Phone number
Email address
Address Line 1/2 (Recommended)
City, State Zip (Recommended), Country (If other than the country you're applying to
Objective/Summary
I recommend this section if you can write a decent one that actually sums you up in 2-3 sentences and gives an overview of you resume. Nobody reads cover letters anymore; this IS your cover letter. If you intend to just fill this with meaningless buzzwords and fluff it works against you; leave it off.
Work Experience
Company --------------------------- Location
Title --------------------------- Start/End Dates
If your title is not sufficient to give the reader a picture of your place/role in the organization include one sentence, as short as you can, positioning yourself.
- 3-5 bullets total. Measurable accomplishments
- Responsibilities with measurement of level of success
- Technologies you used, deliverable you produced with them and measurable effect/use/success of the deliverables
- Projects with measurable outcome
- Sensing a theme? What you did won't get you hired; how well you did it will. Don't tell the story of you coming to work day to day; tell the story of how you made positive impact within the company, with numbers as much as possible.
Repeat the experience entries as many times as necessary to cover your work history. Generally you
don't want to exceed 15 years of history on your resume unless you've got a darn good reason. Nobody wants to read about your first job at the roller skating rink. If you've been doing the same thing for 20 years, 15 years of experience is plenty to show that you know what you're doing. Listing everything you've ever done could potentially work against you by exposing your age too.
As your experience entries get older/less relevant, use less description and fewer bullets. The last few entries on my resume are relevant but almost 12 years old so I have listed only the titles/companies, with zero descriptive content. At that point it matters more THAT you did it over HOW you did it.
This is true for recent but irrelevant experience; you were a professional surfer for two years but you're applying for a programming job? Stick the title in there but don't describe it. It
explains the gap in your employment but nobody cares about what went into it because it doesn't affect your ability to do the job.
Do not exceed two pages.
In some industries try to stay to one page (notably Finance/Banking) because the culture hasn't shifted and hiring managers have old fashioned notions of "proper" resumes. In tech industries, two pages is standard if you have more than 3 years experience.
If you are fresh out of college or have less than three years of experience, do not exceed one page. Trust me, this will save you from blathering on and looking less experienced/professional.
Education
School --------------------------- Location
Degree, Subject --------------------------- Start/End Dates (Omit dates if you are over 40)
Do NOT include high school in your education section.
If you have less than 3 years of experience in the area into which you're applying:
- Include GPA. If you have greater than 3 years experience then GPA is optional (and nobody really cares.)
- Include 1-3 relevant special coursework/projects/TA roles/participation in academic studies, if any. Once you have some experience in your field, omit this.
Certifications
Optional; only include if your certifications are current, are recent enough that you still have the skill, and relevant to the area in which you're applying. Listing a ton of irrelevant certifications dilutes your resume.
Skills List
Not recommended. If you have the skill, include it in your experience by name and show how you used it. Recruiters are not that stupid;
if a recruiter pull you up in a keyword search and the only place in your resume that contains that keyword is the skills section, they are going to discard your resume.
Don't think of yourself as desperately fishing for any job; think of targeting yourself specifically for the jobs you actually are a great fit for. If you're worried about recruiters adding ridiculous extra search terms, believe me, recruiters are desperate to fill jobs as quickly as possible (they're usually paid partly based on their time-to-fill metrics), and they aren't throwing in extra irrelevant criteria just for fun to make their job search harder.
Awards
(Optional) You can weave these into experience often, or you can call them out if you have enough that it looks good.
Published Work
(Optional) If you actually have relevant published work you *might* consider including it. Better yet,
make a list available on request.
References
(Very optional)
Everyone already knows they can get your references upon request; no need to state that. Include this if you feel you have to, but nobody cares whether it's there or not. DO have a ready list of references, where you called in advance and got their permission to use them as a reference (seriously, I shouldn't have to say that either...) that you can provide when asked.
If your recent experience is irrelevant but you have older experience that is relevant, following the guidelines above can screw you because all the good data will be lower down on your resume. In this case
consider using a skills-based resume. Trim your experience section down to absolute minimum title/company/dates/location info, insert a Skills/Achievements type of section and describe your capabilities and accomplishments by category without regard to the job you were in at the time.
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Format and word this however you will; don't use MS Word content control boxes because half the applicant tracking systems out there can't properly scan and read them. Submit in MS Word or PDF format but make sure if you use PDF that it's a text-searchable PDF.
[edit] I'm currently responsible for one of the biggest applicant tracking systems on the market, have a recruiting background, and I spend pretty much every minute of every day talking to recruiters. And, btw, I know the online hiring process fvcking sucks right now; I'm working on fixing that. It's one of my life goals actually. If you have brilliant ideas about drastic ways to change things or you really want to dedicate your own technical skills to building incredible recruiting software, feel free to PM me.