In these hard times for employment a great resume is a essential tool for nearly everyone in the work force.

If you have a job , you should have a resume ready to go in the event you need one. If your looking for work then the great resume is even more critical.

I've personally kept a resume up to date since I started working and that's some time now.

There are many many schools of thought on what a resume should and should not contain and I'll give you my cut and whats worked for me.

First What is a a resume?

Well in general I think it's a tool to get the attention of a employer to get a interview. IT is very uncommon that someone would be hired based solely on a resume. There are exceptions but it's rare. A good resume needs to be crisp, relatively short, generally 2 pages at most and it needs to tell a compelling story, especially in these times.

In general I recall a statistic that a person will start reading/scanning a resume and spend about 7 seconds.. yes only seconds determining if they should read on. The entire scanning process is usually around 30 seconds so you do not have much time to capture your audience. A resume is much like a TV commercial if you do not capture your audience immediately they will switch the channel. In the case of your resume, it will go into a pile that you do not want and they will read the next resume.

There are some general guideline I use when writing a resume, critiquing others or writing others.

1. Do not lie on your resume, I have seen this far too often.

2. Tailor your resume to the position you are applying for, for example. If you are a car salesmen applying for a sale position , it's unlikely they will care much about your experience as a computer programmer. Focus your resume around your sales experience.

3. A resume is a marketing vehicle/tool it's not a life story document , I was told many times
a resume is a marketing document not a biography for a library. You need to focus on "What you can do" to sell yourself.

4. Find a format you like and stick to it, switching and formatting strangely can confuse your reader this is not good.

5. Spell out any terms or Acronyms, remember the person screening your resume may not be the hiring manager and therefore may not be a expert in you area, abbreviations may mean nothing to them.

6. Experience it listed most recent to oldest, and please be careful of tense. IF you still have your current positions use present tense. The past jobs use past tense to reflect those as accomplishments.

7. This is Important. List Accomplishments in you job descriptions. Try to be specific.

Example:

Car Salesman responsible for selling new cars to retail customers. etc etc etc.

Good Example:
Key Accomplishment's:
Sales Leader 5 years in row.
Created and managed TV advertising campaign to dealer XYZ

Better Example
Key Accomplishments:
Sales Leader , selling 250+ cars 5 years in a row.
Created and Managed A 1.2 Million dollar, 6 month duration TV Advertising Campaign for Dealer XYZ

MUST HAVE'S:

A Hub Page can't be a complete resume writing class but I'm going to suggest that this is in my opinion the most important section of your resume.

The Object/Summary/Lead-in: You have to have this to a a targeted marketable resume.

So What Is it??

Its short, 3 to 5 lines lines long. Followed by bullets that are your key skills and key information
that is elaborated later in your resume:

Here is a example of what one might look like:

Things to consider leaving out:

This is my cut, do not list your College Degree dates, it indicates your age and some people may use that to weed your resume out whether intentional or not. Leave out hobbies unless they are directly related to the job you are applying for,

I personally hate the phrase "References Available Upon Request", most every employer already knows this. Personally I have a list already made and the references themselves made aware. In the past when I have interviewed I keep that list on me in case I get asked. That way I can simply pull it out and hand it over, it makes you look like you care and are prepared.

Conclusion:

Writing a Great Resume is a hard task, I suggest if your not a great writer to either use a reasonable service or have friends or a group of people comment and critique your resume. It's a interactive process so do not get discouraged or depressed. Once you have something you can use I think it will be a great new tool in your career arsenal.