Any good resume guides out there?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My resume is pretty crappy these days, a case of editing and revamping the same one over and over again. I’ve decided to start from scratch. The problem is searching for “resume help” on Google gives thousands of pages of conflicting advice and hyper-specific examples.

Anyone know of any good guides out there, preferably one applicable to someone who doesn’t have a ton of experience outside of low-level retail and customer service work.

2

I know there are bunch on-line, but I was told when first entering the job market to keep it short and simple, so it can be easily skimmed over for relevancy, possibly just one page or page and a half. You don’t have to list all your job experience, just the most significant, and employment history should go back 10 years. You don’t have to list personal references, just indicate they are available upon request. I think the topic heads on mine were…Objective: What kind of position you’re seeking and why. Personal History: DOB, SSN, marital status if you desire. Educational History, Military History , Employment History, with sub titles of Job Description and **Employment To and From **dates. and **Personal References **if you chose to list personal references. Hope this helps and good luck!

3

If you’re looking to get into a field that is drastically different than your experience, you need to make sure you’re listing skills that are relevant to the job applied that you picked up while in other jobs.

  1. Are you looking to get into a career field for which you have education? Being able to apply the areas that you learned about from classwork to the experience you have from unrelated fields can be essential to show that you’ve got potential for a good fit at a job,
  2. Do you have some experience within those jobs that lasted for a while? Were you given any opportunities for advancement, or achieved goals? Did you manage to make a significant impact while there? You’d be surprised at what you can produce from even the lowest end CS jobs.
  3. What are you ultimately looking for while job hunting? If you’ve got a good idea of what you want, an objective can really work for you. If you’re not so sure, leave it off; a weak objective is worse than no objective at all, IMO.
  4. Do you have skills that you learned outside of your work history that’d be useful for employers to know about? Definitely put them down in a section toward the bottom.
  5. Do you volunteer anywhere/have you volunteered anywhere that’s relevant? Some places will count unpaid experience toward your overall experience and may give you a higher pay grade as a result.
  6. What is going to be most useful for future employers to know about you?
  7. If you’re in the States, potential employers need not know how old you are, your SSN (until hired), or marital status. It’s legally none of their business while they’re in the hiring process.
4

nm

5

No, no, and no. All three inappropriate/illegal/a really bad idea.