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Tips on How to Write Your Best Resume or CV

"Your objective in writing your resume or CV is to get an interview, not to win an award for graphic design

or to see how much of your years of work life you can reduce to one page."

First Consider these Ironic Starting Points:

• The candidate and the employer very often look at the same resume or CV from two diametrically opposed viewpoints:

• If the employers initially think you are wrong for their job, you have probably lost your first and only chance to compete for that great position that you desire, even if you resubmit your resume or CV a 1,000 times. In this negative assumption-filled environment, good candidates often fail to be called to interview for positions that they could fill with great personal success and to the great benefit of their company. And companies go many months "paralyzed" or "unable" to find the right persons for their key positions, losing hundreds of human-hours and thousands or millions of dollars in missed work and missed business opportunities.

• It is also very important for candidates to always be aware that automatic candidate sorting and screening software technologies might work against the candidate who writes a very minimalist resume or CV. These technologies may be used by online jobs boards, including jobs advertisement sites that claim to blast hundreds or thousands of "only good resumes" to employers. And if one's resume does survive past that first gauntlet, then it has to get safely through the software used within the targeted company's HR/ Talent Acquisition department. The main problem with these technologies is that while their goal is to ease the burden of an employer who formerly had to physically read their way through piles and piles of resumes, software candidate screening technologies could make it so that a human employer might not get an opportunity to see every candidate's info. So a great candidate who might have written a minimalist resume might never be known, and great opportunities for both the candidate and the employer could be lost.

• Far too many candidates feel that the resume or CV is merely an annoying formality, so little time is often spent to write it as a showcase of their knowledge and achievements. Some people like to brag that "I never needed a resume to get a job." That might be very true, but my response would be: did you perhaps miss out on even better career choices simply because you never wrote a resume?
  

• Employers feel that the resume or CV is very critical, especially if several persons are involved in the candidate screening process. Often several managers have to be convinced to consider spending their time interviewing a vaguely self-described candidate. In this real-world scenario, then, a candidate needs to always keep in mind that if you are really right for their vacancy, the employer really does want you to reach the interview stage! It's just that everyone, including the candidate, is a busy person, and there's simply never enough time to interview everyone. Therefore, your best chance of getting that interview is to invest some of your time to write a resume or CV that tells the employer who you are, what you know, and what you have succeeded at.
  

• Ironically, as important as hiring managers view the resume as the most important factor in beginning the hiring process, they often allot 2 minutes or less to judge an entire life of experiences summarized in the form of a resume! So your document needs to offer a clear and compelling reason why you could be a strong candidate. No hints, no reliance on suppositions or guesswork. Clear statements about you and your employment experiences.
  

• A good recruiter's intervention at this initial stage of the hiring process helps eliminate certain doubts and accidents that often occur in the employment process if a candidate's experiences are misunderstood by an employer, but if a resume is poorly done, it can be an uphill battle to convince a knowledgeable recruiter or a careful employer that the person behind that poor resume is a more appropriate candidate than s/he may appear to be.

• Notice that I referred to "good recruiter" or "knowledgeable recruiter." I didn't use those phrases just to highlight our firm's capabilities! The fact is that many employers around the world today have stripped down or outsourced their corporate recruitment function. Or they might have assigned an internal talent acquisition person who might have recently joined the firm from a very different industry. Such staff might do an excellent job, but excellence in a particular role comes from experience. A person who is excellent at placing candidates in a certain industry or job category needs time and experience in the new industry to produce excellent results when evaluating candidates. It takes time.

But time is something that a candidate seeking a particular position at a particular company cannot afford.

The Good News is that It is in Your Audience's Best Interest to be Convinced that You are Right For the Job

• Imagine your resume's reader: A busy person who needs someone like you, but because s/he is so busy, this boss waits until Friday at 4 p.m. to wade through that folder of 500 resumes, 450 of which are totally inappropriate for the job. 40 are question marks, "maybes" that almost certainly will never be called precisely because they are "maybes" and not seen as closer fits. 10 are OK, but nobody stands out above the rest. Only 3 will be asked to interview. You are the best qualified person for this position, but your resume happens to be 499^th from the top of the pile. Hungry, wanting to go home, and weary from having to read so many inappropriate resumes, this manager somehow doesn't "read between the lines" of your resume and tags you only as a distant "maybe." Your resume will go into some folder on some hard drive somewhere, never to be seen again.

• Sounds unfair? These are just the realities of career building. Even with internet job boards and keyword search resume databasing, it all comes down to the quality of the material presented and the attention span, intelligence and flexibility of the human analyzing the data presented.

• ART recognizes that all sorts of unexpected variables creep into hiring processes, but one of the reasons why we have posted this page of resume tips is that we prefer to limit the chaos when our candidates are concerned.

Being Specific is Being Understood

• Without misrepresenting yourself, write your resume or CV with a thought to the target firm's specific need. Structure your resume to demonstrate to the hiring authorities how your expertise and personality fit their needs. If you really care about your career, do not send out a resume or CV that is a mere recitation of employment dates, company names and job titles. That tells the reader nothing other than that the writer either does not wish to take the time to explain a career or is a poor communicator. Employers (and recruiters) hate having to guess. Calls following up on a resume or face-to-face interview are best spent building on the framework of discussing your intriguing career history as described in your resume, not doing the tedious filling in of the blanks.

• Never assume your reader will automatically know what you do or know what you have done or how well you have done it. Duties, projects, products, processes, structures, philosophies, sales volume, customer base, etc. can differ greatly even within groups in the same firm. It is a very risky thing to assume, "If they know my title and my company, then they should know what I've done."  Also, I have to say that whenever I hear a manager tell me something like that, I get a bad feeling that that person is one who jumps to a lot of conclusions based on possibly faulty assumptions without a need for facts, details, logic or evidence. I get a feeling that such a person might be poor at motivating a staff that might not know as much as that person about a particular task or process. ("If you work for me, you should know what I want.") My gut feeling might be wrong on this, but that kind of attitude suggests a possibly problematic management style, perhaps making that person a lesser candidate than another for a key management search that I am doing.
  

Be Proud of Yourself and Do Not Be Afraid to "Brag"

• Sometimes it is due to cultural reasons or upbringing; sometimes it is a concern that the reader will be bored by reading so many details; and sometimes a person simply is not sure that he or she has anything interesting to say about his or her work experiences, past and present. If you typically require others to discover your "hidden talents," it is imperative that you break yourself of the habit of being ever humble and all quiet about what an interesting person you are, at least when it comes to writing your resume. Why change? Well, if you are reading this page, there is a reasonable chance that you feel your present company does not recognize your "hidden talents" and because of it you may have been passed over for that key promotion, raise or bonus.

• For better or worse, many employers today believe that "the person who does not ask does not get." Look at it this way: if a hiring manager is considering two candidates with remarkably similar educational backgrounds, job titles, years of experience, etc., but only one candidate thought to say "This new system that our team introduced saved the company $500,000 over two years" and "as a result of this new strategy, our company achieved a rise of 28% in domestic sales to a total of $8 million," which one do you suppose would get the offer? The sad fact might be that you personally saved $5 million over one fiscal year and increased domestic and international sales by 53% to a total of $120 million, but nobody would know it because you didn't tell anybody. Please don't miss out on opportunities that could be yours!

• Stating your achievements is not saying you are better than other people, only that you are proud of what you have done. An employer would like to know this information so that you both together could discuss a better way of doing business.

• By the way, when we say "brag," we don't of course mean "be obnoxious." Nobody likes reading a resume of a person who describes himself only in clichés. Generic phrases such as "detail-oriented,"  "self-starter," "team player" or egotistical sounding words and phrases such as "single-handedly," "all by myself," "against all odds," "tirelessly," "world class salesman," "natural leader," "true visionary," and so on do not in themselves tell a reader so much about the circumstances under which the achievement was accomplished as much as the psychological makeup of the writer. If you are detail-oriented, a self-starter, a team player, a great sales person or even a visionary thought leader (ugh!), let us see that through your achievements and experiences.
  

• Without context, your reader will not give you the benefit of the doubt that you are "a natural leader" (even if you are) or a "tireless" worker (even though you are) unless you show them what you did. Rather than use clichés, which often are used by lesser candidates to make themselves appear important, try to let your actions speak for themselves. Example: A person who supervised three product cycles in a year when previously there had been one a year is assumed to be "tireless" and may be a "natural leader," since such an achievement requires the gathering and harmonizing of many departments and individuals. A great sales person doesn't have to tell us s/he is great, just the facts: how much sales increased (percent and dollars) or what type of new customer base was opened up. These are the details employers want to know.

• If you only have a few years in industry and think you have no achievements, you may be surprised to know that even describing what you do and the circumstances of your duties will be of significant interest to employers.

• Many people mistakenly believe that if they write a resume that is very specific in detail they will rule themselves out of certain hires, so they write resumes that are so vague and generic that they fail to show the reader that they have mastered anything or have anything to show for being a "manager managing staff" or a "project engineer doing projects and interfacing with customers." Tell us rather what kind of manager you are, what kinds of projects you have worked on, what types of customers you have dealt with. Let the employer decide if those experiences might be transferable to that company, even if your experiences are a little different from those described in some job description. Many people are hired because their experiences were "close enough," but that decision only comes if you give an employer a chance to know what you have done.
  

• In the United States in particular, it is expected that the candidate should describe duties and achievements fully in a U.S. industry-style resume of between roughly one and three pages. The structure and tone of the results-oriented U.S. industry-style resume with one's most recent job listed first (reverse chronological order) are in direct contrast to traditional CV's, and in many cases the submission of a traditional CV for a position with a U.S. firm will yield negative reactions at stateside positions. Internationally, check the requirements at each company, but increasingly, U.S.-style resumes are being seen as belonging to more "dynamic" or "internationally oriented" candidates.

• Even in their native setting, traditional CV's are nearly impossible for readers to decipher without investing a great deal of wasteful time contacting the recipient's references and carefully examining one's publications. (Reliance on Publication Lists is itself a bad strategy. They only state titles and your name, but they do not tell a reader what your conclusions were to a theory or what role you had in the discovery. Did you do 10% of the work or 90%? Did you work on that project for two weeks ten years ago, while the next publication listed is based on work you have been doing ceaselessly for the last ten years?)

• The resume we require is an efficient document meant to rapidly tell the reader if you will fit a particular position or not, and if not, to suggest other possibilities to the reader.

Good & Bad Leads: Specific Resumes & Vague Ones

• One Company wants a specific type of experience. It isn't you, but your vague resume accidentally leads them to believe it is. They call you in for an interview. Bad interview. Bad lead. No offer. Wasted day.

• One firm wants a specific type, and your specific resume suggests it is you. They ask you in for an interview. Good lead. You receive an offer.

• One firm wants an unusual, hard to find type. A person with all different kinds of experiences, with maturity. A fast thinker who doesn't even have to be familiar with their product. In fact they are the only company in the world making this state-of-the-art product, so there are no "competitors" where such a person might be found. They are path-breakers and need another path-breaker who has what they do not have. A certain kind of experience or knowledge or personality. They see your specific resume. Not exactly right, but nobody is. That's OK. They are intrigued by your career. They ask you in for an interview. You hit it off. You both offer a lot to each other. You could make a real difference here and they will compensate you well for it. A very good lead. You receive an offer.

"Spelling Counts" & Other Protocols

• Run a "spell check" and/or "grammar check" of your resume. After that is done, rest, and re-read it a day later yourself. Most computers will not register "principle" (principal) engineer or "to" (two) years as errors. If you are uncertain of spelling or usage, use words you are sure of or ask friends to review your resume. While many employers ignore occasional typographical errors as trivial accidents, many employers view such errors in documents as important as resumes as completely inexcusable, as evidence of sloppiness and bad communication skills.
  

• Placement of data. Picture your resume as a sort of "marketing device," not simply as a summary of the passage of time. You are not obligated to give equal space to every job that you have ever held. Doing so, you might end up minimizing your valuable experience (and marketability).
  

• When you dust off the old resume, try not to just tack on your current job onto your old standby. Doing so may create a lopsided end product. In some ways you are a different person with different marketability after each job. Others will not automatically understand how it all fits together. It is up to you to shape their image of you. Show a career progression but do not lose sight of the image you want to project. Aspects of your present or last job may not be as important to your future employer as those of your next-to-last job. A resume highlighting you ten years earlier might not do justice to the person that you are today. Always consider yourself a new person with new achievements, experiences and training when you rewrite your resume!
  

One of the simplest resume errors to correct but one of the most confusing ones is when a person adds a new job onto an old resume, with the current job stating employment history as XXXX-to-Present and the preceding job also stating XXX-to-Present. That error due to the writer not carefully reading the resume before submitting it can lead a person to think that s/he was simultaneously working at two different companies. In years past that might have been less likely, but in these times when gig work is common, an employer might misunderstand your work history and not want to interview you.

• Size. There are all kinds of theories going around on this one. One says that you devote one page for every decade of service. The worst one is that "no resume should be over one page--it doesn't get read if it is." Do not worry about fitting your resume into one page if you have good achievements and several jobs to tell an employer about. But try to get it within two or three pages at the most.
  

• Chronological Resume or Skills Resume? Generally, we at ART prefer to know "when you did something" and "where you did it." Context can be important in understanding a candidate's background, but in certain rare cases a "skills resume" is a better choice. If you have worked at many different companies--particularly as a contract employee--the breaking up of your experience by dates does not help your marketability. It is therefore easier to present yourself as a "unity."
  

Summary: What We Like To See:

• Your Company Name and Division, Location, Its Sales Volume

• The Chief Product(s) You Work With & Their Applications

• The Chief Markets or Customers You Serve

• Your Dates of Employment (Month/Year preferred)

• Your Official Title (and translation if it is not clear or industry standard) If multiple titles at one company, place dates with each title after the title (otherwise the casual reader might think you changed employers more frequently than you did).

• Your Duties. Think of answering the questions "who?", "what?", "when?", "where?", and "how?" Try not to describe yourself as "we" (as part of a group) here. Tell us what YOU PERSONALLY do or did. Never take credit for things you did not do, but do take credit for things you did do.  If you were part of a group that performed a particular task and achieved a certain effect, describe your role in the group.

• Describe your achievements in tangible terms, usually in dollar/euro values or percentages of increase, decrease or improvement. Be aware that you may be asked to document your achievements.

• If you supervise a staff, briefly state how many people report to you and what they do.

• Sometimes it is good to state whom you report to. If you report directly to a President or a CEO this could be interesting information for an employer.

• Your Education should accurately reflect true degrees earned or in process of being finished. If you state "degree expected 20XX" be prepared to explain how it will be granted. Do not mislead about education. Offers have been known to be rescinded upon learning that a candidate has misstated his or her education. Companies are often very interested in candidates wishing to improve themselves through higher education or training. Be proud of your achievements here, but please do not pad.

• Be truthful about your experience, your achievements and your career goals. The resume is meant to open doors to a future of your own making. Make sure the person you are describing sounds like you and is the person you want others to see you as. The new job may demand that you be that person they thought they saw in the resume.