A resume is inherently a very personal thing. After all, it's basically a 1-2 page summary of your entire working life. Wow. Seems like a big deal when you think of it that way. Everything there is to say about your career, your education, and your qualifications boiled down to the ultimate executive summary.

Ok, so it's not quite as bad as all that. Your resume is important, but it only really needs to get you in the door. At that point, your awesome interviewing skills can take over and you'll be free to really educate your audience on who you are and what you're all about. So your resume doesn't really have to cover everything, but it has to give a good enough picture to get you in the door.

Back to the personal issue. Writing a resume is about tapping into what makes you unique and bringing it out in a way that those reading it want to meet you. You need to sell those points about you that make you a good candidate. What is it about you that makes you better for this job than the guy sitting next to you, either at your existing work or in the waiting room.

There's more than a miniscule chance that you share backgrounds, experience, and educational history with some of the other candidates. That might get you over the minimum bar for entry into the position, but it's not what's going to really pop off the page at the reader. You need to somehow hook something special about you into those points.

I want to take a quick sidetrack to point out that you don't want to over-personalize your resume. I've talked with a number of people that were very turned off by people that reached too far out of the norm in terms of formatting, content, or design. This might not apply if you're trying to get into a job in a creative field, but for the average joe looking at average-joe office jobs, don't get too wild.

Making a resume your own is more about an undercurrent, a theme, a flavor that permeates the dry content and hits the reader in a subtle way that they just can't put their finger on. You want them to take a second look at the resume and try to figure out exactly WHY they just can't help wanting to call you in for an interview.

If this sounds more like Advanced Resume Writing than Intro to, you're not wrong, It's a difficult aspect to capture well, and multiple rewrites and crumpled up sheets of paper are in your future if you embark on this endeavor. But the reward is knowing that when you send out your resume, you will be getting a call back. It's a great feeling, and I hope that this will inspire you to try to take your own resume to that next level.

This has been 'Make resume of my own'.

My blog has more Tips on Writing a Resume.