Resume Format

When creating a resume, you’ll choose a layout or format that best summarizes and presents your experience to an employer. The most common format for a resume is chronological, where job history is categorized in reverse order starting with your current or most recent position. There are other types of formats such as the functional resume that emphasizes skills or the hybrid format that’s a combination of chronological and functional. Functional or hybrid formats are options for long gaps between jobs or industry changes. If you’re in doubt or want to play it safe, the traditional approach is using chronological format, one page (two pages max), and your cover letter to address concerns you have about your work history.

These three formats have a few key elements:

• Your contact information
  • City
  • Phone Number
  • Email Address
• Who you are as a professional and why you are qualified for this job
• Your work history
• Your education or training
• Your relevant Skills

Hint: For clues on skills, training, and relevant work experience, visit the Browse Careers page and refer to career cards for jobs you’ve had and the job you’re applying to.

Drafting your Professional Summary or Career Objective

• Start with an adjective or describer
• Follow with your title as a professional (or student)
• What your experiences or training is with that title
• Mention the title of the position and company you are applying to
• How you will help the company
• What examples of skills or traits support how you will help the company or be good in this position

Check:

• That you are not going over 4 sentences
• That you are accurately describing yourself and qualifications
• That you are pointing to skills or traits mentioned in the job posting

Chronological Format

Chronological Format for Current or Recent Student

Functional Format

Hybrid Format

Surprisingly, contact information is often overlooked and applicants will either forget to include it, list inaccurate contact info, or use unprofessional email addresses (think “funguy200@email.com” or “happyprincess@email.com”). If you do not have a professional or accessible email address, create a new one and use a variation of your legal name.

Beating the Screening Process

Employers want to hire people who seem interested in their job opening and company, so it makes sense that they will dismiss resumes that are not tailored to either and appear generic. There’s a reason we pointed out including relevant work experience and skills in your resume. In fact, reports show that millions of resumes never reach a hiring manager since computer software like Applicant Tracking Systems screen resumes for keywords identified by nearly 75% of US employers. If the job posting lists competencies, skills, or minimum qualifications, include those in your resume if you have them. You can also see which words you may want to include by running the text from the job posting or even the “About Us” section through a word cloud generator, but be careful not to overuse keywords.

Naturally, you may want to highlight as many of your positive traits and experiences, but your resume is one of many that the hiring manager will receive just for that posting. If a resume does land in front of a hiring manager, he or she will know within the first few seconds to discard a resume because it’s not tailored, is unorganized, or takes too long to read.

Things you can omit from a resume:

• Buzz words that are inauthentic or will require a dictionary
• Long lists or repetitive ideas
• Experience; you don’t have to include irrelevant work history that you did over 10 years ago or that you only did for a very short period of time
• Education; you do not need to include your high school unless it was the highest level attained and you graduated in the last 2 years

Maximize your resume’s content by only including relevant items to the job you are applying for, skills that will be transferrable to the new position, and examples to support your candidacy. It may help to think of your resume as a movie trailer: if you grab the attention of the hiring staff with the material you include on your resume, they will be more likely to want to learn more and hopefully invite you to interview.

Presentation

Resumes are your opportunity to brag about yourself, but you’ll want to keep the document professional and matter-of-fact. Here are some additional considerations in how you present yourself:

• Try to write without “I”, “me”, or “my” in your resume since those are implied and take up space; Also, do not use “you” or directly address the company since this document is about the person submitting it
  • Ex: “Managed a team of phlebotomists”
• Make sure your writing perspective and tone are consistent throughout the resume
  • Stick to past or present tense, either one, but not both
  • Use active instead of passive voice
    • Active voice is more direct in performing the action
      • Example: “Scheduled software updates” or “Operated and maintained the forklift”
    • Passive example: “Software updates were scheduled” or “The forklift was operated and maintained”
• Stay consistent with your styling
  • Use the same style, formatting, spacing, and alignment throughout the resume
    • Ex: write all your dates the same way whether it’s Month Year or MM/YY
  • Finish bullet points without periods or with periods throughout the resume, but stay consistent

Grammar

Make sure to proofread your resume and use a spellcheck tool in your software or one that is available online. A hiring manager could immediately reject your application if you have spelling errors or use incorrect grammar.