Section 10: Your Resume
Creating a great resume starts by understanding its purpose.
Understanding the purpose helps to avoid critical resume mistakes and increases the likelihood of moving forward in the hiring process.
Before we discuss the purpose of your resume, let's review the common types and styles of resumes you may hear about.
Resume Types
[Most Common] Standard Resume:
For anything outside of government roles, a standard resume is your go-to.
This includes applications to big companies like Amazon and Google down to your local mechanic shop or coffee house.
The content in this course focuses exclusively on standard resumes.
Federal Resume:
Used when applying to jobs with government agencies through sites like USAJobs.
Can require additional information, such as references, job level, hours worked per week, and pay rate.
Requirements of what needs to be included can be found in the job posting.
More information on Federal resumes, including an example resume, can be found here.
Resume Styles
[Most Common] Reverse-Chronological Resume:
Work experience is listed in order, starting with your current / most recent employer and working backward.
Accomplishments are listed in bullet point format under each employer.
This is the style many recruiters prefer and what is recommended 99% of the time.
Functional Resume:
Emphasizes skills over work experience.
Accomplishments are listed in bullet point format under each skill.
Work experience is often included, but it is generally more difficult to correlate accomplishments with specific roles.
Even if it is not true, functional resumes can give the impression of trying to hide employment gaps.
For these reasons, we do not recommend functional resumes for the majority of job seekers.
The information in this course focuses on standard resumes with your experience listed in reverse-chronological order.
Armed with an overview of the types of resumes, let's shift our attention to the purpose of your resume.
The purpose of your resume is simple. It is to secure an initial call with the recruiter.
Your resume needs to grab the recruiter's attention and quickly and effectively establish yourself as a highly qualified candidate. To do this, your resume needs to be concise, specific, and achievement-oriented.
Your resume is not a 6-page in-depth summary of every job in your lifetime. It's not a place to add 10 bullet points for every single role. It is a 1-2-page document that highlights relevant experience, skills, and abilities that make you the best candidate.
Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes. You're reviewing hundreds of resumes to find the best candidates. There's a tight timeline from the hiring manager, who wants to hire someone quickly. You're also assigned to 6 other job openings. On top of that, you have emails, meetings, and other tasks to take care of.
Do you really have time to read every resume word-for-word? Even with the help of software, your time is extremely limited. Exact figures vary, but many state that recruiters spend less than 10 seconds reviewing each resume.
As a candidate, this is why it's imperative to grab the recruiter's attention right away. You must establish yourself as a top candidate from the start by front loading key information.
Once that connection is established, it will hopefully buy additional time for the recruiter to review your resume. The key to a great resume is concise, relevant, and achievement-oriented content that is prioritized for the recruiter's eye.
If you speak to 100 people, you'll get 100 opinions about resume best practices. True best practices explain WHY they are implemented. Focus on practices that are backed by solid reasoning or data.
Throughout your transition, you’re bound to receive plenty of advice on what to include / not include on your resume. Everyone has their idea of what the ideal resume should look like.
This can be frustrating when you receive contradicting advice from different people. It can be helpful to ask their reasoning as to why something should or shouldn’t be included in your resume. They may have a perspective you hadn’t considered previously.
Regardless, it’s important to differentiate between subjective and objective advice. Subjective is based on preference. Objective is based on data and facts. At the end of the day, remind yourself that everyone is trying to help the best way they know possible.
In the next section, we’ll break down the various resume components and provide examples of each.