Eskelin Technology

There must be thousands of books, articles, and blog posts focused on how to write a resume. So why write another one? There’s a saying that the best way to learn something is to teach it. I have found this to be true in writing as well. It’s a great way to structure your research on a topic and organize your thoughts. So that’s what this is, a compilation of my thoughts on resume rules. Some are based on advice I have heard or read from others I don’t recall and therefore can’t give credit. Others are based on my own preferences from reviewing hundreds of resumes in past hiring efforts.

1. Heading: State name, city/state, phone, and email. Don’t put “phone:” or “email:” in front of the contact info. Just put 555.123.4567 and john@johndoe.com. Minimize the info to just the essentials. Don’t include a fax number or full address. You don’t care about responses by mail since they are typically standard “we received your resume” responses from HR. Fax numbers label you as “old school”.
2. Simplify: Eliminate clutter. Tighten up sentences (see Elements of Style). Use the least amount of words and information possible to get your point across. Look at each title, sentence, and word in the resume and determine if the information is redundant or unimportant.
3. White space: Ensure adequate white space by having a minimum of 1 inch margins on the sides, .75 on the top, and .5 on the bottom.
4. Graphics: No lines. No pictures. No fancy anything.
5. Fonts: Stick with one font throughout. Use size 11 font. Use Times New Roman or Arial only. Strategically use bold font to structure the resume and guide the eyes through the resume.
6. Bullets: limit bulleted lists to 3-6 bullets.
7. Proofreading: Make sure there are no spelling errors or grammatical errors. This seems obvious but you’d be surprised at how many people have mistakes in their resumes.
8. Paper: If mailing the resume, use plain white paper of good quality. Colored or textured paper is too risky. This is kind of like the advice to stick with a white dress shirt with no patterns if you aren’t a fashion genius. You’re better off just sticking with what you know will leave an impression of professionalism.
9. Relevance: Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. What are the key things they are looking for when scanning a resume? For example, years of experience, type of experience, education, past employers, titles. On first pass, they are looking for signs that they should read the entire resume. By skimming through your resume, the hiring manager should be able to determine “at a glance” that you have the experience, education, and professionalism to warrant more of their time.
10. Content: First, forget the standard BS about roles and responsibilities or job descriptions in your resume. Focus on the key things that a hiring manager cares about. Have you managed people? How many and for how long? What did you accomplish in the job? If you list a project, what was your role on that project? Were you in the driver seat or were you just along for the ride? Second, focus on quantifying the benefits of your accomplishments. For example, “renegotiated the contract, saving 35% ($2 million) annually” or “eliminated dead weight, increasing sales per employee by 27%”.
11. Summaries: If you add a summary at the beginning of your resume, it should be 3-4 bullets. It should concisely characterize you in a few bullets. For example:
    - 20 years of project management experience with Fortune 500 companies
    - 10 years experience managing 10-15 employees
    - Harvard MBA
    - Project Management Professional (PMP)
    If I was looking for a very senior project manager, I wouldn’t need to read the rest of the resume to know I want to interview this person. The goal of this section is to characterize yourself in a few bullets so that a hiring manager will decide to interview you without reading any further. If your bullets can’t do that, don’t include them.
12. Length: My recommendation is to stick with 1-2 pages. Often the hiring manager will be scanning through dozens of resumes. It’s refreshing to find a quality 1-2 page resume when digging through a pile of 4-6 page resumes that go on and on.
13. Categories: Use “Experience” instead of “Professional Experience”. It’s cleaner and less flashy. My recommendation is to use the following categories: Summary (see 11), Experience, Publishing (only if published. This could also be added to the Personal category), Community (only if significant role), Education, and Personal (see 14).
14. Personal: I recommend adding a few sentences at the end of the resume that bring out your personality and show that you are a real person.
15. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is another place to house an online version of your resume. One thing I like about LinkedIn resumes over standard resumes is the ability to solicit referances and incorporate them into the resume under each position.

Feel free to suggest your own resume rules in the comments as I know there are many who would disagree with me on #12.

Lastly, resumes are a standard selling tool for job searching but they shouldn’t be your primary selling tool. Networking is a much more effective way to find a job and resumes are secondary if you already know the hiring manager or, better yet, have worked with them in the past. And you know you have arrived when your reputation and body of work (accomplishments, keynotes, books, articles, blog, etc…) is substantial enough that you don’t need a resume.