I've now had three very different jobs where part of my responsibilities have involved reviewing resumes and giving input in hiring decisions. Since we're coming up on graduation season, I wanted to share my (by now very strong) opinions about resume structure and content in the inconceivable event that a prospective employer has not already snatched you up and offered to pay you gazillions of dollars and excellent health insurance for being the fabulously talented individual your doting grandmother believes you to be. I'll start out with a caveat that this is all pretty subjective, but please consider it food for thought because if your resume ever happens across my desk, this is what I want to see.
1) Keep it to one page. Academic CVs are obviously a different beast. But for traditional resumes, for the love of gobstoppers, please keep it to one side of one sheet of 8 1/2" x 11" paper. Edit judiciously. Play with margins, spacing, font, and font size if you must. When I see a resume that goes for two pages I assume most of it is fluff. I expect to see French club--excuse me, le cercle français. I impute arrogance and verbosity. None of these are good things.
2) Be specific. Compare: "Led volunteer group." With: "Trained and supervised group of 15 junior high girls in entrepreneurial after-school program." Or compare: "Interests include the arts." With: "Interests include screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s." In each of these cases, the first phrasing makes the job seeker sound like a boring robot, or someone who created their resume with a set of web-generated checkboxes. And I, as the potential interviewer, have to work far too hard to come up with a question about these entries that doesn't make me sound like Ralph Wiggum. Do you... like... stuff? Don't do that to me. I won't like you very much. On the other hand, people who are specific on their resumes are memorable. They make it really easy for me to ask questions and learn more about them, and easy is good because I honestly have not spent the past hour googling you, studying your resume and otherwise preparing for your interview. I scanned it when I got it, and maybe again five minutes before you walked in the door if we both are lucky. I want your resume to read like it was written by an actual person, not a robot zombie cubicle dweller. There's no shame in being a cubicle dweller, but no prospective employer wants to feel like their shop is a bunch of veal-fattening pens.
3) Leave out the "duh" entries. I cannot think of an office-based job where knowledge of Word is not a minimum skill set. I will assume you are proficient in Word. If you are not proficient in Word (or Excel, or HTML, or Project, or whatever the minimum knowledge base for your field is), get some training. From a friend, an adult ed course, a job training program, DIY by fooling around with a book and a computer, whatever. Pedigree doesn't matter here. Your local public library should be able to hook you up with these resources. Learn it, know it, love it: those programs will let you do your job well. And then don't put it on your resume. Putting "duh" entries on your resume makes me think you are either filling space because you don't have much else to say in the way of relevant experience, or that you think Word is some special skill that gives you a leg up on other applicants, which means you may seriously misunderstand the nature of the job. For lawyers and law students, yes, "Westlaw-certified" is a "duh" entry. What the hell does that even mean? It sounds like a USDA grade for clueless people.
4) Fonts with stupid-sounding names do not belong anywhere on your resume. If its name includes any of the following words, I prohibit you from using this font: comic, Gothic, -bats, -dings, or the name of any symphonic composer. Nothing that purports to look like script. Unless you have to use Arial Light for spacing reasons even after you have ruthlessly edited, use a serif font, and make it big enough that a reviewer with poor eyesight can read it easily. Seriously, be kind with your font choices. I hate being reminded that my eyesight sucks, it makes me feel old and curmudgeonly. You do not want these feelings associated with your resume. You cannot go wrong with Times New Roman, especially if you are applying for a job with yuppies.
5) Edit. EDIT!!! For the love of all that is holy and not, make sure you don't look like an idiot. Or worse, like a pompous idiot. I am too good (or guilt-ridden) a person to do this but someone out there will submit your most egregious mistakes to some web-based list, and then even I am not too good or guilt-ridden to snicker at your grammatical misfortune.
6) Leave the "controversial" entries in. This is a non-caveat to rule number 2. First, a personal anecdote: I did some work with a "controversial" (read: media-savvy, politically progressive) organization when I was in school, and when interviewers saw this on my resume they either loved it or hated it. It was a great self-selection tool for me, because I knew I wouldn't end up anywhere I couldn't be myself. Now that I'm on the other side of things, it actually provides me some useful information about the candidate, and no, not as a litmus test for whether they agree with me. I do love seeing resumes with a liberal, pro-choice, pro-human rights, green, etc. bent because I want to interview that person and hear about the work they've done. But I also know that the choice to include that information was probably a considered one, and one that I respect a lot. For that same reason I also appreciate the resumes that include things that show a conservative bent, because I remember how my law school career counselor tried to dissuade me from tipping my political hand, and I like people who have the sisu to not take their career counselor's advice in this respect. And while I wouldn't necessarily want to take a Federalist out for a pint, I know I work with people who would, so it all evens out in the end. Everyone has someone they want to buy a round for.
Obviously this rule does not hold if you are applying with a nonprofit or policy group whose work is antithetical to your beliefs. Unless you've recently had a seriously convincing come to Jesus experience you are an idiot to apply for such a job, much less worry about your resume for it. But if you're looking for regular old office work in a non-policy, non-lobbying office, please go out on a limb and show some opinion. Yes, it will lose you some jobs with assholes. But so will having gone to a state school, or being in the top quarter of your class rather than the top 10%, or being on a second career, or not being on a second career. Assholes are picky like that. And trust me, if it can be at all avoided you do not want to work for an asshole. So screen 'em out.
5.06.2008
Resume Rules For Job Hunting Fools
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13 comments:
FF, I realize you're an attorney and not an admissions officer, but I was wondering if you have any thoughts on a one-page vs. two-page resume for law school admission? I've been out of undergrad for seven years, got a master's degree, worked extensively abroad...there's a lot of stuff to include. Mercilessly pare, or indulge in a second page?
Nothing that purports to look like script.
God, yes. I'm almost more willing to overlook a minor typo than I am script font. We all make mistakes, but the choice of that font was intentional. Shudder.
Joy, I've never worked in admissions, so maybe someone else could weigh in on this too, but here are a couple of things to keep in mind about the admissions process, based on my understanding. First, your application, along with your resume, will be reviewed by people whose job it is to do this stuff. As in, it's in their job description, and they have a little bit more time to do a thorough review. That's not been the case with me, I've needed to do all the stuff I normally do and then on top of that carve out time for hiring stuff, which does bias me toward short, concise resumes. There may be professors on the application review committee who share my bias for similar reasons, but they probably won't make up the whole committee. So that tends in favor of the two-pager.
Second, your resume will be part of a larger application packet in a way it's not for the people I review. Sure, we get writing samples and grade sheets, too, but no personal statements or short essay questions. Those application items may actually make it easier to pare down your resume, because you can briefly mention a position or experience on your resume and then expand on it in a short essay. So that tends in favor of a one-page resume.
So I guess my (waffle-y, lawyer-y) advice is that as an academic institution, law schools will be far less put off by a longer, CV-style resume than I am. But you're going to want to pare it down once you're in law school and applying for summer positions. That goes whether you're applying to firms, to nonprofits, to judges, or to government agencies. So you can either pare down now, and make it easier on yourself when you get to that point, or you can pare down later. Doing it later might be more work but you could at that point custom-tailor each resume to highlight only the most relevant work experiences. There ought to be merciless paring at one point or another, though.
Good luck with your applications!
I thought this was kind of interesting: are you smarter than a spell-checker. I took the quiz very quickly and got 4/10 incorrect. I'm a writer/editor by trade, though, so it's likely that those typos wouldn't get through a less-rushed proofread. However, anything that I applied for would probably require excellent written communication skills, so I doubt any prospective employer would overlook even minor typos.
It's so funny because for years I've struggled to keep my resume at one page, always editing and changes font sizes. I work in nonprofits though, so it's really important to include my volunteer experience. I'm revamping my resume right now, and after some research I was finally convinced that the one-page resume rule is kind of old school. And as long as it's not fluff, a second page is acceptable.
Then I read this... Now what to do!
Joy, as someone applying to law school right now from a top-25 school to top-25 schools, my pre-law advisor said that a two-page resume is more than fine. Just don't go beyond that.
Inspiring!
Off to make a revamped resume! I especially love your advice about interests. Because, really, it's way cooler that I dig 1920s architecture than to say "real estate."
thanks, FF and Meredith!
I don't know. For the first time in my professional life I've been reviewing resumes and discover that I *hate* the "interests" section. If someone has a true passion in life, I suppose it's okay to mention it. But as you've said, they often amount to non-interesting generic comments like, "Playing guitar, running 5Ks, traveling." This doesn't do any good to differentiate you as a candidate. Now, I work for an educational non-profit, so if you have a passion for educational puppet theater, or something, that might be relevant. But I feel like any experience directly related to the job can be encapsulated without the use of the "interests" section. I was heavily involved with Amnesty International in college, but I included that under a "related experiences" section. Anyways, I think this proves that no matter the basic tenets of good resume writing (I wholeheartedly agree with yours!), there will always be a subjective element at play...
Yes, definitely edit! I found a typo on a recent cover letter in which I expounded on my "communication kills" instead of "skills". That's what my 7th grade English teacher called "showing writing" because I showed them that I wrote the cover letter right before sending it.
For the longest time, I've had the same reaction to listing "Proficient in Microsoft Word and Windows XP" type credentials; however, I recently heard from someone that sometimes when big companies weed through resumes trying to hire someone, their initial cut might weed out any resumes that don't list these essential skills, especially if the skills were listed in the job description. Often times, I guess there are just people in HR who are tasked with trying to sort through hundreds of resumes, and one easy way to weed out candidates is to eliminate those without these basic credentials. I don't know how legit the advice is, but it may be wise to list any skills on your resume that are required in the job description (assuming you have those skills), especially if you are applying to a large company/firm.
As an employment counsellor, the only disagreement I would have with your statements is to only have 1 page.
We tell clients 2 pages are fine IF it's relevant, they're not leaving 1/2 of the second page blank.
Also interests? ONLY if it's directly related.
Adding on to Lo. Price's comment: My resume does have all the "duh" entries left in, purely because where I work all resumes go through HR before going on to the hiring department. Our HR department weeds out resumes based on whether or not they have those basic qualifications listed--so they stay in.
So if you see one of those resumes come your way, it may be because the applicant is trying to make sure they don't get screened out before their application makes it to you.
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