Your resume is the first impression many people will have of your skills and abilities; make that first impression count. You must maximize the opportunity!

This article “7 Tips to Give Your Resume Reader Appeal” discusses some of the most common elements having to do with reader appeal. What you must always keep foremost in your mind with your resume that it’s not about you! Your resume is about your reader and making their job of selecting your resume for further consideration as easy as possible.

So here are the 7 Tips. Look for more of my articles on Resumes and Recruiter Appeal.

1. Leave plenty of white space to make your resume look better and for the reader to make notes.

First let’s clarify what “white space” is. White space is the area around your resume where there is no writing. It’s simply open space. White space makes your resume inviting and uncluttered. A resume without white space is off-putting and looks tedious to the reader. White space serves a second purpose as well. Once a recruiter or hiring manager decides that they are interested in your resume they like to make notes. This is only logical when you consider the volumes of resumes they receive. Notes will help the reader remember what clicked with them about your resume and allow the reader to write the questions to be asked in a follow up phone or face to face interview. Make the reader’s job easier by leaving space for those notes.

2. Use an easy to read font: i.e. Ariel, Calibri, Times Roman, Courier, etc.

Select an easy to read font and stick with it throughout your resume. Your intent is not to be fancy or show that you know a variety of fonts or are a master of the word processor you are using; your purpose is to present your credentials to the reader. Some people use several different fonts but to what purpose. The reality is that it sends the reader a message that you may be indecisive and are easily distracted.

3. Use bullets, not paragraphs, to emphasize the point and stay focused.

Your resume needs to be easy to read and it must be easy for the reader to pick out the relevant experience. Bullets make this process much easier. Through the use of bullets you can highlight the relevant parts of your experience. A bullet ideally is one line but may be two lines of information. Anything more makes it a paragraph and you lose your focus. Bullets should not have multiple sentences or again you are back to a paragraph format.

4. Use a 10 or 12 pt font for your resume detail.

A 10 or 12 point font makes the resume easy to read. Again the idea is to make it as easy as possible for the reader and that is your intent. People use smaller fonts because they think it is a way to shorten the resume, recruiters recognize this tactic and it doesn’t accomplish the desired purpose. In fact, using the smaller font may move your resume more quickly to the reject pile because it is harder to read.

5. Keep the use of bold and italicized words to a minimum. Use them to highlight specific pieces such as companies worked for or job titles.

Bold and italicized words can be useful in separating sections of your resume, but don’t overdo it. Over use is distracting and can end up hiding what is important. I’ve seen people italicize entire sections of their resume and I ask to what purpose? Just because you can is not a reason. Remember the resume is for the reader not you.

6. Correct any misspelled words, some people add the misspelled word to their dictionary convinced that they have spelled the words correctly; trust the spell checker.

Misspelled words are a regular occurrence on resumes and they really tell a story about the writer. In today’s electronic world with spell checkers there is no reason for a misspelled word. The funny thing is that some people are so sure they have spelled the word correctly and that the spell checker is incorrect that they will add the word to their local dictionary. Remember that the word local is part of this dictionary, when the word gets to the reader’s word processor the misspelled version will not exist and the word will be identified as being misspelled. You need to trust the spell checker and not yourself.

7. Watch for fragmented sentences with your bullets; a good rule is don’t use periods at the end of a bullet, and the word processor won’t show a grammatical error.

Because resumes are not personalized with pronouns or other identifiers your bullets may be recognized as a sentence fragment or incomplete thought by your word processor. If you are using Microsoft Word; the fragment will be underlined. A way to avoid this error is to eliminate the punctuation at the end of the bullet. If you leave out the punctuation there is no problem. The rule here is to be consistent. If one bullet does not have punctuation, no bullets should have punctuation.

The appearance of your resume can make or break whether you are considered for the opportunity or not. One typical requirement for most jobs is attention to detail. Breaking the rules above can be an indication that the writer is not attentive to detail and can immediately rule them out for consideration.

For example if you are applying for an administrative position and your resume is filled with spelling errors, misused words, grammatical errors, etc., you are eliminating yourself from consideration. There are enough opportunities for a recruiter to eliminate potential candidates, don’t make their job easier or do their job for them.

Until next time – Happy Job Hunting!

Tom is the founder of UPPROACH and the Smart Resume Writing System. UPPROACH is about helping individuals and even organizations realize and put to use the tremendous amount of untapped potential. Instead of simply taking a new approach to things; take the UPPROACH and see how much more you can accomplish. The Smart Resume Writing System is designed to create resumes that recruiters will read.

Tom has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (Human Resources) from Northern Michigan University and a dual MBA in Marketing and Management from Grand Valley State University. Tom works with individuals on career planning, realizing their own potential, and developing SMART resumes.

Tom speaks to groups on a variety of job search planning, resume creation, networking for jobs and related topics.

E-mail him at tom@smartresumewritingsystem.com You can find out more about Tom, his Career Management consulting, and the Smart Resume Writing System at http://www.smartresumewritingsystem.com

Popularity: 13% [?]

Technorati Tags: Resume Writing Tips