The Resume
When you’re ready to make a career move, the first step is a great resume. This is the sales tool to get you in the door---but then you have to prove yourself in an interview.
The resume needs to contain several essential sections: Objective or Career Summary or Profile, Employment and Education. A Skills section is good for someone working in any kind of technical field, and a special area listing Seminars or Certifications or Awards might be appropriate depending on your career field. Definitely avoid worn out phrases in the Objective section: (“work in a challenging environment,” “a challenging position,” work for a leading edge company”). In the Education section you are listing your current or last college first. If you didn’t finish college, include the years that you attended and/or the number of credits completed. Never indicate a BS or BA degree if you didn’t actually get it. You’re ok in saying, “completed 105 credits toward a BS in Math”.
Your resume should contain a reverse chronological listing of Employment and Education (i.e. current job first, most recent college attended first) with enough details highlighted to entice a hiring manager or the HR manager to call you in for an interview. Emphasis is on technical skills, accomplishments, achievements, duties, sales quotas reached, individual or team participation and projects or people that you’ve managed. Avoid putting the resume in first person (“I achieved sales quota in my first year”) or in the third person (“Mr. Smith led a team of JEE developers”). Instead simply say “Achieved sales quota in first year” or “Led a team of JEE developers.”
What about the length of the resume? Two pages max. I know this is a controversial area, but think about the skills you are highlighting for this career move and trim the rest down. If you’ve got a long career history, you could just list the jobs you had in the early years and detail the most recent jobs.
Things to definitely leave off the resume: your age, social security number, marital status, list of references and anything that mentions a political following or religious affiliation. References should be provided when requested—not before. All these other items are private information and are inappropriate in a resume.
