10 Steps to Writing a Great Resume

The book The Damn Good Resume Guide, Fifth Edition: A Crash Course in Resume Writing lists 10 steps to writing a great resume as follows:

• Choose a job objective


• Find out what skills, knowledge, and experience are needed


• Choose a resume format


• Make a list of past jobs


• List your skills and accomplishments


• Create action statements


• Arrange your action statements


• List your education, training, and professional development


• Summarize your key points


• Polish and proof

Here's my take on these:

• I absolutely hate having a job objective for three main reasons: 1) It serves no purpose. The objective is already understood -- you want this job. You know that and the employer knows that. 2) It takes up prime selling space -- it's often the first thing a reviewer sees. Do you want to waste the valuable few seconds he looks over your resume on an objective? No! You want that time to be selling how great you are. 3) It's about you: your wants and desires. But a job application is not about you (at least about what you want). It's about the employer -- what HE wants. The only concern for you is whether you fit what he wants or not.


• The book suggests you find out what skills, knowledge, and experience are needed so you know how to tailor your resume. In general this sounds like a decent suggestion, but I'm not so sure it's really practical or has much use. If you are in one field and looking to stay in that field, it's likely your resume will be the same no matter what position you apply for (mine has been). Now if you're looking to change careers, perhaps you need a bit more tailoring, but for my entire career I've developed and used one standard resume and it's worked quite well.


• As for format, I recommend the chronological resume. I would guess (correct me if I'm wrong) that the vast majority of reviewers expect and prefer this format, so why go against the flow and use something else? Do you want the reviewer to spend the six seconds he looks at your resume trying to figure out the format (and, as a result, what the resume is saying)? I thought not.


• I agree with their point #4 -- to list past jobs. BTW, they say in the book to list them in chronological order (with the most recent at the top -- some would call this reverse chronological order). Of course. :)


• I also agree with the listing of the skills and accomplishments of each job and describing them in action statements (their points #5 and #6). I try to combine skills and accomplishments as much as possible. For instance, "Led multi-function team to deliver 18% costs savings to new product launch." This statement contains both skills (leadership ability as well as great people skills -- you'd have to have the latter to lead a team from different departments to this much success) as well as an accomplishment (you saved the company 18%!) If you can fill your resume with bullet points like this (my last resume had 5 to 7 of these per job), you've got a winning document.


• Steps #7 and #8 are formatting/filler steps IMO. Yes, you need to arrange your statements for maximum impact (for each job I've held I list the accomplishment statements in descending order -- from most important to least). And yes, you need to list education and meaningful training experiences. But these will seldom get you hired, so be concise with them.


• I am 50/50 on the summary statement. As a reviewer, I personally prefer to get into the resume and develop my own conclusions about the candidate. But there is probably no harm with a short and sweet (a few bullet points at most) summary of your best accomplishments at the top of your resume. If the reviewer sees nothing else, he will get the main points you want to make, and that's about all you can hope for. That said, if I was looking for a job these days, I wouldn't use one.


• The best way to "polish and proof" is to send your resume to several people (trusted colleagues work the best IMO) and have them review it. I've both done this for others and had others do it for me and there is ALWAYS something that can be improved upon.

There you have it. Overall, I think the book is "decent" and it's certainly concise, well-formatted, and contains plenty of great examples of resumes (if you overlook the objective statements). Even though I have some disagreements with their recommendations, I would certainly look at it as one of the resources I'd consult if I was looking at writing a new resume. In particular, their section on how to write powerful action statements for your accomplishments is great.

So, what's your take on the list -- and my thoughts on it?

Comments

[Adam]

You should probably lighten your stance on objectives a little. I spent three years with a Fortune 10 giant; first as a co op/intern, then as a training program resident, then finally as a lead recruter for my alma mater. I recruited specifically for my business unit, location, and major, and primarily for those students looking to do 2+ semesters alternating between school and work.

Being able to tell me which of our various intern programs you were interested in, when you planned on graduating, and what training program you would eventually apply for was very important. This weeded out those who were just dropping off a resume/didn't put in the time and effort, and reflected very well upon those who were familiar with the company and had a specific goal in mind with us, because we had a specific plan we were recruiting them for.

I definitely agree that for most people/opportunities the space is better used on something else. But there are some scenarios when it is totally appropriate, and will land you an interview. (MOST of the people who were laser focused on us would get the interview).

[Young Professional Finances]

I think an objective is only necessary if you're applying for a wide variety of positions. For example, my company is hiring for interns. The job description is so vague, you better put an objective down so they actually know what you want to do.

If you're applying directly for one specific job, then I agree, an objective is a waste of space. Honestly, I still have one of my resume because I feel like it's expected but I'd really like to take it off.

[Jeremy]

I must respectfully disagree with your second point. 'Find out what skills, knowledge, and experience are needed' could be quite important, depending on what industry/field you work in. Not all fields have clearly defined and accepted roles. For example, in my field of computer programming, one of the first things I want to know is what languages will this company expect me to know. And then I want to know what duties they assign to that roll (does their lead developer spend more time leading or developing?).

My 2¢ worth.

[HP]

Agree with Jeremy - even when applying to jobs in the same industry the requirements can be slightly different and require you to tailor all of your action statements.