Resumes are your sell sheet into a potential job. Therefore, to put your best foot forward, you want to make sure to have a stellar resume that best sells your experience and talents.
Today we will cover some overall tips, but some more specific tips can be found at Creating a Strong Resume: The Basics, Your Resume: The Introductory Portion, Formatting Tips for Creating the Optimal Resume, and Creating a Resume that Highlights Your Skills and Talents. This last article in this series will cover some final tips that you will want to keep in mind as you create your resume.
Length
If you are creating a resume, you never want to go past two pages. Anything more is too much and likely will be discarded by the reader. In addition, remember, you are trying to entice the potential employer to call you in for an interview. If you tell them everything they have no reason to invite you for an interview.
How Far Back Do You Go?
While resumes are an art and not a science (i.e. there are no hard and fast rules), generally you only want to go back 10 years or two jobs if you were at your current job for more then ten years.
Why? First, anything older then ten years in most every industry is no longer relevant information to potential employers. They want to know what you are doing now and what you are doing with the latest and greatest trends and tools in the industry.
Secondly, you don’t want to “age” yourself on your resume. If you put your entire work history on your resume an employer (wrongfully so in many countries) can calculate your age and perhaps determine if they want someone younger for the position.
Special Interests
As a career coach, generally I suggest that people only list special interests that tie back to relevant job skills. For example, if you were the leader of a club you may want to provide details about that to showcase your leadership skills.
In contrast, the fact that you are a member of a bike riding club is not something you want to put on your resume. So, how do you know what is relevant and not for any “grey area” special interests? Always ask yourself, will this item make me a stronger candidate for the job? In this case, the answer is most likely no (unless the job is related to selling bikes, etc..)
Tied to this, make sure to leave off controversial volunteer and special interest work. For example, being a member of a gun club, a particular political affiliation, etc. You certainly can put that you did fundraising for a political party if it’s relevant to the type of work you are seeking, but leave off the specific party to avoid creating a personal conflict with the interviewer in case they have different views.
Ready, Set, Go!
If you have any questions not covered, feel free to ask them in the comments. Or, if you have any extra tips or success stories you would like to share, I would love to hear them!