Rules on How to Make a Resume

Rules of resumes

There are very few rules in in How to Make a Resume. They are:

• Include only relevant info
• Do not have any spelling errors or other typos
• Be 100% truthful

The rest is personal preference with the help of career advisors, professors, mentors, and other people who know a lot about resumes or your field. Ultimately, it needs to come down to what you want. All we can give you is suggestions based on our experience, such as:

• Use active verbs to begin your descriptive lines
• Do not use personal pronouns (I, me, my)
• Do not use unnecessary punctuation (i.e. periods at the end of descriptive lines, colons at the end of headings, parentheses around dates, underlining text)

• Use bullet points (instead of a paragraph) for your descriptive lines to make them easier to read (see how nice it looks?)
• Make sure your format (the way your resume is organized) is consistent and flawless as this will make it easy to read
• Do not include high school stuff (of course there are exceptions for really relevant experience, or if you are a freshman, sophomore, or maybe junior in college)
• If you choose to include a “Relevant Coursework” section, make sure to only list courses that will show breadth (not obvious from the name of your major) or depth (specialized study in one area)
• Make it one page long - unless, you have extensive work experience, you have a post-bachelors degree (Masters, PhD), or can otherwise “prove” that you need it. If you do have a second page, make sure it is a full page and have just your name and the page number at the top right (not all of your contact info repeated again)
• Take care when including experience in areas that may be controversial to some people, such as religion, politics, sexual orientation, etc. You can include it, disguise it, or omit it. Just think about it first. Please see a career advisor to talk about this if you are concerned about how to describe this kind of experience
• Use caution with templates. We actually recommend that you don’t use them at all. Templates tend to be pretty inflexible if you want to change anything later – which you will!! Also, there are not many templates to choose from and employers get sick of looking at the same thing over and over. Besides, we want your resume to stand out, not look like all the rest!
• Note that these are all suggestions relevant to resume formats for jobs in the United States! For information on resume standards in other countries, see a career advisor to get access to the GoinGlobal software or other resources

Nevers

These are some categories that shouldn’t be included on a resume (in the United States, for most job fields)

• Height, weight, age, date of birth, place of birth, marital status, sex, race, health, and social security number (can be included on some International Resumes – check standards by country first!)
• Reasons for leaving previous job(s)
• Picture of yourself – or a picture of any kind, for that matter!
• Salary Information (This can go in a cover letter if, and only if, the employer asks for this information)
• References (These go on a separate page)
• The title “Resume”

A word about appearance

Appearance is critical. Go to a copy shop or use a high-quality laser printer to duplicate your resume. Use a good quality bond paper in a neutral color (such as white, off-white, or ivory). Avoid blue, gray, textured or speckled paper since they do not fax or scan or copy well. Lastly, remember to purchase matching blank sheets for your accompanying cover letter and reference list. If you want to be super fancy, mail these materials in an envelope large enough so you don’t have to fold them.

Targeting your resume

Make sure you are carefully reviewing your resume each time you give it away. Update your objective, add information the employer specifically asked for, take out irrelevant information, and organize your sections so the most important information for that job is at the top (or right under Education). This will not take long and can have a lot of impact!