1- Know the purpose of your resume
The objective of your resume is to land an interview, and the interview will land you the job.
2- Back up your qualities and strengths
Connect them with real life and work experiences.
3- Make sure to use the right keywords
Check the job description and related job ads for a clue on what the employer might be looking for.
4- Use effective titles
Try to be as descriptive as possible, giving the employer a good idea about the nature of your past work experiences. For example:
Bad title: Accounting
Good title: Management of A/R and A/P and Recordkeeping
5- Proofread it twice
Proofreading it once is not enough, so do it twice, three times or as many as necessary.
6- Use bullet points
Use bullet points and short sentences to describe your experiences, educational background and professional objectives.
7- Where are you going?
Including professional goals can help you by giving employers an idea of where you are going, and how you want to arrive there.
8- Put the most important information first
When describing your experiences or skills, list the most important ones first.
9- Attention to the typography
First of all make sure that your fonts are big enough. The smaller you should go is 11 points, but 12 is probably safer. Do not use capital letters all over the place, remember that your goal is to communicate a message as fast and as clearly as possible. Arial and Times are good choices.
10- Explain the benefits of your skills
11- Avoid negativity
You don't need to include, for instance, things that you hated about your last company.
12- Achievements instead of responsibilities
13- No pictures
Sure, we know that you are good looking, but unless you are applying for a job where the physical traits are very important (e.g., modeling, acting and so on), and unless the employer specifically requested it, you should avoid attaching your picture to the resume.
14- Use numbers
Don't mention that you increased the annual revenues of your division, say that you increased them by $100,000, by 78%, and so on.
15- One resume for each employer
Tailor your resume for each employer.
16- Identify the problems of the employer
Try to understand the market of the company you are applying for a job, and identify what kind of difficulties they might be going through. After that illustrate on your resume how you and your skills would help to solve those problems.
17- You don't need to list all your work experiences
If you have job experiences that you are not proud of, or that are not relevant to the current opportunity, you should just omit them.
18- Go with what you got
If you never had any real working experience, just include your summer jobs or volunteer work. If you don't have a degree yet, mention the title and the estimated date for completion.
19- Don't include irrelevant information
Irrelevant information such as political affiliation, religion and sexual preference will not help you. In fact it might even hurt your chances of landing an interview. Just skip it.
20- Use Mr. and Ms. if appropriate
If you have a gender neutral name like Alex or Ryan make sure to include the Mr. or Ms. prefix, so that employers will not get confused about your gender.
21- No lies, please
22- Keep the salary in mind
23- Analyze job ads
You will find plenty of useful information on job ads. Analyze no only the ad that you will be applying for, but also those from companies on the same segment or offering related positions.
24- Get someone else to review your resume
25- One or two pages
The shorter your resume is the better.
26- Use action verbs
Are basically verbs that will get noticed more easily, and that will clearly communicate what your experience or achievement were. Examples include managed, coached, enforced and planned.
27- Use a good printer
28- No hobbies
29- Update your resume regularly
30- Mention who you worked with
If you reported to or worked directly with highly ranked executives, add it to the resume.
31- No scattered information
Your resume must have a clear focus. If would cause a negative impression if you mentioned that one year you were studying drama, and the next you were working as an accountant. Make sure that all the information you will include will work towards a unified image. Employers like decided people.
32- Make the design flow with white space
Do not jam your resume with text.
33- Lists all your positions
If you have worked a long time for the same company (over 10 years) it could be a good idea to list all the different positions and roles that you had during this time separately. You probably had different responsibilities and developed different skills on each role, so the employer will like to know it.
34- No jargon or slang
35- Remove your older work experiences
Most experts agree that the last 15 years of your career are enough.
36- No fancy design details
37- No pronouns
You resume should not contain the pronouns "I" or "me." That is how we normally structure sentences, but since your resume is a document about your person, using these pronouns is actually redundant.
38- Don't forget the basics
The first thing on your resume should be your name. It should be bold and with a larger font than the rest of the text. Make sure that your contact details are clearly listed. Secondly, both the name and contact details should be included on all the pages of the resume (if you have more than one).
