Fast 5 Resume Tips (and a Bonus Tip!)

I recently offered a Fast 5 Resume Review to my college advising students, which featured resume reviews along with five tips regarding how they can improve their resumes. As I reviewed the documents, certain patterns emerged and I found myself offering many of the same tips to each student. The tips, listed below, reflect perspective gained from my past experience as a professional recruiter and current role as a college career advisor.

• The content in your bullet-point statements should be impactful. Statements should begin with strong action verbs (like collaborated, instructed, created, managed, etc.) and illustrate your achievements. How did you make a positive impact? Can you quantify that impact? Don’t just say, “Responsibilities included…”. Rather, “Measured performance of server and made recommendations that improved efficiency by 10%”.

• Make sure your formatting is consistent. Common formatting watch-outs include spacing (especially around dashes related to dates), line/space height between sections, font size (10-12 recommended), format of content in each section (list company name, position, dates, and related bullet points the same way for each entry), and margins (all margins should be the same, recommended size of 1/2″ to 1″). Also, bullet points help important content stand out better than dashes or paragraphs. People read top to bottom, left to right. Experts estimate a recruiter will make a decision about you as a candidate after a 6-10 second scan of your resume. Make sure the important info is easy to find. 

• Your verb tenses should agree. If a you worked a job in the past, action verbs should be in the past tense. If you are currently working in that position, the verbs should be in present tense.

• Entries within each section should be reverse chronological, so your most recent experience is listed first. If you want to highlight experience that is more relevant to the position to which you are applying, but not most recent, you can create separate experience sections. Title your experience sections accordingly to reflect what each section contains. For example, if you are entering a field that values research, put that experience in a section titled Research Experience.

• Soft skills, also called transferable skills, are really important. Where relevant, integrate these into the sections that contain content (work experience, volunteer experience, etc.). Important soft skills include leadership, critical thinking, problem solving, written and verbal communication, collaboration, teamwork, adaptability and creativity. Do not place these skills in a stand-alone listed format as you would technical skills (for example, Microsoft Excel), because they require context to be considered valid. For example, “Collaborated with a team of five to identify security risks within the program,” or “Developed creative thinking, problem solving, and communications skills through the management of over 20 laboratory students”.

• Bonus Tip: If you have a good LinkedIn profile, add your customized LinkedIn URL to your resume header. A resume is a one-page (usually) summary of your key skills, achievements, and qualifications. LinkedIn, an online professional networking platform, allows you to tell your story in a more comprehensive way and you can feature samples of your work (research posters, materials you have designed, videos you’ve produced, etc.) that will bring your candidacy to life.

How can your resume benefit from these suggestions? Take a look at your resume and see how it matches up against these tips. Once you’ve refined it, have your resume reviewed by professionals in your field. While career advisors can give you tips and teach best practices, industry professionals can tell you what’s most important in your target field when it comes to presenting your candidacy.