So, you’re entering the job market again. You know that you’re going to need to update your resume, but you have no idea where to start or how to give it that professional polish. This series is for you. We’ll be hitting all the important points on how to write, format, revise, and edit your resume to get it ready to be seen by even the pickiest of employers.
What should I include?
Whether you’re overhauling your old resume or starting from scratch for the first time, there are a few things that should absolutely be in your resume:
- First things first: your name, up at the top. Make it big and bold so no one can miss it.
- After that, include your contact information, right under your name. Again, we want this to be easily found. Definitely include your phone number, email address, and the city you live in. A full address isn’t crucial, but if you’d like to include it, it doesn’t hurt.
- Your biggest section will probably be your experience section. We’ll cover this in more detail later. The important thing to remember here is reverse chronological order. The most recent position goes first.
- Education. Where did you go to school? When did you graduate (or are expected to graduate)? What did you study, and did you get a degree in that subject? All important questions to answer in this section.
- Make a section for your skills. Technical, software, administrative, etc.
- There are some other sections that don’t need to be included, but many people chose to. These could be an overview or summary section (a short statement on the trajectory of your career so far), a volunteer work section, or a related experience section (usually for people with decades of experience who want their entire job history reflected, but want to save space by not including bullet points for older positions).
How should I order that?
There aren’t a lot of conventions to stick to when it comes to ordering a resume. Of course, your name and contact information should be at the very top, no exceptions. But after that, it’s a little looser. Your experience should be one of the first sections they read. But if you’re a recent grad, it’s probably a good idea to put your education section first, since that was the most recent occupation of your time.
There’s more where that came from…
Get started on your first draft of your resume and check back here soon for more tips and tricks on writing and polishing your resume. I’ll be covering visual readability next, so stay tuned!
If you’re in the job market, head over to our open jobs page and submit your resume! We have all of our open jobs listed there, so browse through to see if your next career move is just waiting to be found.