How to write an effective résumé

July 22nd, 2010

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If you are applying for a job at Border Stylo, you might be interested in this blog post. I want to thank Ray Schneider, our HR Director, for his help with it.

First of all, let’s clear something up: A résumé is a tool to get a phone call, period. It’s not a diary or a list of every single thing you’ve ever done. There are many different opinions on how to write one. The truth is that there is not a single right answer on how to do it. However, there are some tips that might help you write yours in a more effective way. Here you have a list of some recommendations and some things that you should avoid doing.



What you should do

The order -  Education goes first. You worked hard for your degree and you should “show it off” at the top of your resume. Only put it at the bottom of if you finished school more than 10 years ago. Then talk about your work experience and finally talk about your skills. Having an objective is somewhat unnecessary.

Bullets - When writing about what you did at your previous job, avoid lengthy paragraphs and instead use bullet points. Give the resume reader just enough information to pick up the phone and call you. You don’t want to irritate the reader by listing unnecessary “fluff” in a long-winded paragraph.

Focus on tangible achievements - It is important to say that you advised the CTO on NoSQL databases, but what matters is that “based on the final assessment Cassandra was implemented for the picture sharing component of the tool”. Avoid saying “designed security measures for the company”, instead say something like “Designed 3 of the 7 current security protocols for international transactions being enforced”. 

Explain the result of the achievement - If possible, after describing the achievement, explain what the results were. “Exchanged the implementation method, resulting in a deployment speed increase of 30%”, “which led to…”, “which translated into…”, “which is now the standard…”


Get to the point - No BS. Express your ideas briefly like, “developed the emergency communications component based on product specs, which is now the standard technology used in the corporation”, instead of “they told me about an idea on how to manage some security risks and after several meetings we agreed on the technology and then I worked on it, and it is now working fine”. See the difference?

Use numbers - Were you part of a group effort to reduce waste in an industrial process?, How about “Led a team of 6 engineers in a project that reduced 17% of the waste generated in the main manufacturing process, resulting in savings of 2 million USD per year”. Note how the sentence starts with an action oriented verb “to lead” and closes with “resulting in…” 

Use action verbs that tell a lot about you. For example, built, analyzed, strategized, deconstructed, implemented, specified, identified, researched, lead, instructed, and reorganized.
 
Consistency - The résumé should be written in the same style. From how you use adjectives, to periods, spacing, commas and so on. People tend to copy sections from old résumés that were written years ago and paste them in the new version. When you add new jobs, there might be differences with the old text since our writing styles change as we become more experienced. If you decide to do this, read it carefully and pay attention to the style, it should be homogeneous. Edit when necessary. 

Presence in Social Media - Yes, for some positions, a robust LinkedIn profile might give you brownie points. If it’s an impressive LinkedIn profile, I’d recommend listing your URL with your résumé contact information.

Quadruple check your résumé - Ask your friends and family to read your résumé and scan it for any errors or sections that should be rephrased.

What you should NOT do

No pictures, seriously - This is not a beauty contest.

No inappropriate email - If you don’t have one, create it. Nothing like “sexy.emo.666@..” It´s as simple as using your name, “paugasol@test.com”. 


Try to keep your résumé down to one page, if possible - Remember that recruiters read dozens of them every day. You can expand depending on your specialty. For example, Software Developers must list all the languages they know and the years of experience with each one. That usually makes their résumés go over one page. That is totally fine. There are some cases, like when you are applying for a top managerial position, where you will need to list all of your relevant achievements (which should be many!). However, it should never go over 3 pages. 

Do not list any achievement that you are not willing to repeat in the future - If you unloaded 3 trailer trucks full of hardware equipment when your company moved to a new office, do not mention it unless you will be willing to do it again. The recruiter might read it and consider you for a cargo unloading position.

So there you have it! These are just a few of the dos and don’ts of résumé prep. If you have any tips or even questions, feel free to leave them below in the comments!

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Tagged with: HR, resumes tips, jobs

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