Durham College Continuing Education Durham College (Durham) is one of the leaders in student enrolment and course offerings within the OntarioLearn Consortium. Currently, Durham offers well over 600 courses to choose from on a ...
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Graduate School of Business Administration The Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) has been delivering its Master of Business Administration program online since 1996. This highly flexible, ...
Rochester Institute of Technology Part-Time and Graduate Enrollment Services Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private comprehensive university with regional accreditation founded in 1829 and delivering distance education since 1990. RIT offers nearly 50 online program options, including ...
Writing your resume -- the basics Page1 next page >>
Format
There is no perfect resume format. There are hundreds of books with resume information in them and the advice varies dramatically. How you lay out your resume is really up to you, but the best advice is to keep it simple. Look at the resumes of friends or relatives or find samples in books and on the Internet, and choose a style you like.
Use readable fonts such as a roman serif font for normal text and a san-serif font such as Arial for headings. Don't use speciality fonts, including cartoon or handwriting styles. Use basic formatting such as all caps for your name, bold for your headings and italics for other emphasis. Indent items under their headings and use simple bullets with lists. The normal text should be about size 10 or 11, with headings in 11 or 12. Your name can be larger -- up to 20, with your contact information closer to the normal font size.
Try to leave a lot of white space and don't crowd text on the page. Use the paragraph features on your computer software to add space between lines of type -- no more than 1 1/2 times normal though. Too much spacing between lines can look amateurish or as if you're trying to make a small amount of information seem like more.
When designing your resume take into account that you should be modifying it for different employers -- focusing on things that a particular employer will value. Don't do one static resume and then print off 500 copies to distribute. Print a couple to have on hand for emergencies, and then print off customized ones for each employer you apply to.
Functional vs Chronological
A chronological resume lists your experience in chronological order, with the most recent first. Chronological resumes have a large section for employment or work history, with one or two insignificant sections tacked on to refer back to education or other achievements.
A functional resume uses a different approach to presenting information, breaking it down into sections other than employment history -- sometimes omitting dates altogether. Chronological resumes are the easiest to write but not always the most effective. And as a career starter, you resume will most likely become a functional resume by default.
One of the advantages of functional resumes is that you can include volunteer experience and schoolwork together with any co-ops, internships or regular jobs by presenting the experience in the skills or achievements sections. By including it in these sections it isn't necessary to make note that it was volunteer or school related. Wait until the employer asks about it in the interview before you point out that the skill was acquired from a hobby or from a one-time summer job.
Chances are that the employer had made up his mind about you with the first few seconds of the meeting - so anything you say during the interview probably won't affect your chances of getting the job as much as you think. By the time
Durham College (Durham) is one of the leaders in student enrolment and course offerings within the OntarioLearn Consortium. Currently, Durham offers well over 600 courses to choose from on a ...
The Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) has been delivering its Master of Business Administration program online since 1996. This highly flexible, ...
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private comprehensive university with regional accreditation founded in 1829 and delivering distance education since 1990. RIT offers nearly 50 online program options, including ...
