Whats the current approach to resumes for a person who has been employed the last ten years, now has to relearn how to do a resume.
Short functional , or is there a new or old favourite way. This is Canada specific, but I would imagine that any North American HR would pretty much be the same.
Declan
It’s the top half of the first page that gets you past the first manual sift. Detail all jobs you’ve had in the last 10 years in reverse chronological order, everything prior gets 1 line. For each job you do detail you want the dates, your job title, a brief description, ~5 bullet points of roles and responsibilites, and 2 achievements.
Your CV should be 2 pages at most. Unless you’re in a field where you have to go into more detail, but you’d know that already.
If sending a written CV, print it and the covering letter on heavier than normal paper - 90 or 100 gsm instead of the normal 80 gsm.
At least in the US, a resume is not a “disclosures” document, it is ad copy. You don’t have to list every job you’ve ever had or even list every degree or certificate you’ve received. If you’re going for an accounting position, list degrees in Accounting, Finance, Business Management, Law, etc., and job experience in accounting, project management, planning, etc. Don’t list all the McJobs you had in college. If you want to show that you’ve done some other stuff and are well-rounded, pick one or two of them and leave the bulk of the resume to directly relevant items.
If you are working on an MA in Medieval French Literature because that’s your passion, leave it off unless you are applying for an inherently creative job such as graphic designer. Leave it for the chit-chat later after you’ve shown your direct qualifications.
University GPA can be relevant if you are a recent grad. If you have ten years of experience in the field, that 3.7 ain’t worth jack to the manager.
At least in the US, things that don’t go on a resume include reasons for leaving former jobs, criminal record, immigration status, race, and marital status.
Moderator Action
The best way to write a resume is more of an advice question than a factual question. Let’s move this to IMHO. Any factual answers (like reference cites for current accepted styles) are still welcome there.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Avoid improper use of apostrophes.
The “Functional” style of resume has gotten a bad rap in the US and is disfavored by a lot of managers. The rationale behind this is that managers are afraid that people will use the functional format to hide or obscure things that the candidate would rather be overlooked, such as insufficient time spent in relevant jobs (yeah, you have all these awesome skills and used all these awesome things, but you only used them at this one job you had for six months in 2005 and the rest of your experience is in culinary burger inversion coordination engineering).
Dammit!!!
And I do wonder, to what extent are resume expectations the same across North America? Are there any specific industries where it would differ between countries?
Run a spelling check. I know this seems like dumb advice, but I just read a pool of resumes and cover letters for a job that requires good written communication and several had glaring, correctable errors. Not a good ad for yourself.
As a hiring manager, I want to know accomplishments–what have you done to help your employers be successful. Too many resume’s are job descriptions. Great, you were able to wrangle a job as Chief Engineer. That you sucked at it doesn’t come through. That you developed the first Warp Drive doesn’t either.
Based on this, I have developed a hybrid resume’. First page is broken out functionally with my accomplishments under each function. The second page is the list of positions I’ve held with short descriptions. This way, the hiring manager gets a feel for how good I am at doing my job and then has a list of the actual positions I’ve held and the progression of responsibility.
Its been pretty successful.
Dammit, I wrote up a resume exactly like that, and put it up on SDMB for feedback, and everyone without any exceptions was like “DO NOT EVER DO THAT FOR GODS SAKE YOU WILL DIE!”
So like… functional/hybrid resumes do work?
So confused by the real world!
I hire for tech, and the number one thing I look for is skills. We do pretty specialized work, and 95% of resumes won’t have the right skills - and if they don’t I don’t care about anything else.
For those recently out of school education comes first, otherwise employment. Basic job function will do - I don’t want an essay.
I know objectives usually come first, but I don’t personally give a crap about that. They are either self-serving or meaningless. If you must put one in research the company you are applying to and make it about what you can do for their specific needs.
For what I do I do like to see dissertation or thesis topics and publications, but most hiring managers probably don’t care. I also like to see thesis adviser. since I know most of the academics in my area and I can get a good feel for what the person got taught.
Most of the formatting in the resumes I get gets mangled by our HR system, so I don’t care much about that. Just follow the guidelines on the HR site.
Simple. Hire a pro. One who knows your field. This costs $100-200. Pay it.
What does the pro do for this money? Neatly format the resume? Or do an interview with you to understand your strengths? Does the pro assist you in targeting your resume to a particular job? Or do you get a resume you’re supposed to mass mail?
I’ve got a better answer. If you work it correctly, your resume will be no more than a required placeholder.
I don’t know what you do, but you’ve got experience and you should have a good idea of other places where you can work. If you are not in a cookie cutter type of job, see if you can network with people in those places doing stuff like you do. don’t ask for a job - yet. Try to figure out if they are hiring and if so what their needs are.
If you find they have a hole somewhere, you can target your resume to that hold, call up someone you’ve identified (and look at their job openings page to get details about a specific job) and make a pitch about how someone with your experience can help the manager and the company.
No guarantee that you’ll get it, but you’ll be at the head of the pack.
You should have been networking before you needed a job, but most people don’t.
My favorite story. A guy was on an industry committee with me. looking for a job, he gave me a call. It so happened that I was just designing a job for another manager’s group, and this guy was perfect for it. Bang boom, he got hired without this manager even having to look further. Admittedly a best case, but it did happen.
I guess we got his resume, but it was pretty insignificant in the process.
They take you data, write it up in the best format for you. Often an interview is held, but it can be by email if you have a half-decent old resume and know what you want. No typos.
Not targeted to one job, but to one field.
Thanks for the responses. At the moment, I am just doing basic research on who is or might be hiring.
Declan
Declan is going to be ahead of most just by actually researching companies.
One gripe. One university has a masters program. Every person in this program takes the same classes and does the same project. Somehow the placement office in this university has convinced their students to use exactly the same resume template. I get resumes from every MS student in this department, and they are all practically identical except for name, GPA, and sometimes a TA job.
Since I don’t feel like calling all of them, I call none of them.
If one of these students submitted a resume that was different from the others, I’d probably call just to celebrate a rare spark of creativity.
Skill: How I have applied it and succeeded.
Developed new channels for resale of company products. Channels emerged to contribute 20% of the firm’s total revenue.
Your resume should also match your LinkedIn profile. I don’t even look at resumes anymore - I just look at your LinkedIn profile. People are more likely to lie on the resume, then on their publicly visible profile in my experience.