Rules of the resume composing

Remember three key ideas:

1.You have only one chance to succeed with the help of your resume when it is being read for the first time.

2. Writing your resume follow the rules of selectivity. The information for the resume should be selected according to its aims.

3. A successful resume may become the reason of a personal interview with the employer but it does not guarantee getting the job.

Your aim is to make the person reading your resume want to meet you

When there has been announced a vacancy for a more or less serious job, employer gets an astonishing number of resumes. And there is a possibility that your particular resume might not be noticed at all even if you meet the employer’s demands. The resume is read by live human beings. If you are not lucky, your resume may be read at the end of the second hundred of the letters. By that time managers try to get rid of the letters because they already have enough appropriate candidates. That’s why the task is to attract their attention. For that aim your resume should look different from the others. Psychologists advise to use paper of an unusual color. Do not hurry to the store to get some poisonous colored paper. Among the most suitable colors are light-grey, light-yellow, light-green and, best of all, ivory (never use pink or blue!). Of course, paper should be of the highest quality!

Main requirements and regulations:

The style of resume writing should be concise, concrete, active (never write that you participated, helped and so on. It makes them think that you rendered random service), honest.

Resume should be well-structured and be written in a simple language. It must take minimum of your potential employer’s time to look it through and make the decision about it. Your key abilities, achievements and experience should be evident.

One should be very concrete in the formulas’ selection. Don’t write:

Have been teaching

Helped to decrease the number of mistakes

Quick at acquiring new knowledge

Instead you should write:

Has trained two new employees, reduced the number of mistakes by 10% and saved 50000 $ for the company, mastered new procedures in a record short terms – during two weeks

Don’t write wordy and avoid passive tense. Avoid long phrases and intricate words. If you have to use special terms, make sure that they will be understood by everybody. In describing your present work use verbs in the present tense and accordingly if you describe your previous jobs use past tenses only. Be consistent: if you have used some contraction once, use it through the whole resume (but it is better to write all the words in full forms). Avoid using the pronoun I. Prefer positive information to negative do not write settled complaints, prevented the profits from falling, switched my position . Instead you should write helped the clients, increased the product’s potential on the market, advanced in my position.

Concentrate attention on your achievements. Do not write I have worked there for three years, performed extra work. You should write: got a promotion and two salary increases, always performed my job in time.

Resume must be correctly designed. It is connected with the peculiarities of human perception. Resume should be readable. Remember that illegible resumes are never read. Define all the most important headings, see that your resume is designed in one and the same style. Choose the style which is easy to read (big margins, a medium font, enough space between the lines and so on and so forth). One must combine equal intervals, neat margins and one must not ignore indentions. It is better to print your resume with a laser printer so that your text looked more presentable. Resume must be short. It is very important to put your resume on two pages maximum. The optimal size is one page. Usually, each resume takes 15-20 second of manager’s time. During that period the manager marks your as perspective or absolutely unsuitable. That’s why you might not have the second chance. During those 15-20 seconds you should demonstrate the grounds of your pretensions on the job. Describe in detail your recent experience for the 5-7 years. Don’t use minor features. Resume must be well thought-out. Its contents should correspond to the position you are striving for. If you can apply for different jobs, send a few different resumes. Resume must be conclusive. List the results of your previous job, using figures and per cents, show your real achievements. Resume must be exact. Avoid too general information and extra definitions. Resume should be true. Don’t boast writing about your positive experiences. Be sure that you can prove all the information which you included into your resume. Resume should be finished. Employers understand that if they ask for recommendations, they will get them. That’s why do not write in the end that recommendations are attached.

One should say in the very beginning that there is no unified form for the resume. Investigations in the area show that employers pay attention first of all to the previous job, secondly, to the job history, and then to the candidate’s qualification. So it should contain the following data:

1.Your name, age, contact phone.

2.Your aims (why you are applying to that very company, what kind of job you are looking for).

3.Education (starting from your last place of studies, that is in the reverse chronological order). And here you should mention the date when you started and the graduation date, the name of the educational institution, faculty, specialization, granted qualification.

4. Your working experience( again in the reverse chronological order): the date when you started and finished working, name of the company, its priorities, name of your position, the number of your subordinates (if any), your responsibilities and concrete achievements.

5. Complementary education – courses, seminars, trainings, probations

6. Extra skills (computer skills, knowledge of foreign languages, driving license, typing skills and others)

7. Your advantages (mention a few of your personal traits which differentiate you from the others and help to achieve high results).