You've heard the advice: A well-done resume and cover letter are key for getting a great job in the civilian world. Most job-hunting workshops start with how to create those two documents.
Your resume and cover letter will be the first and primary drivers of whether you get job interviews. While it can be tempting to lean on creativity to help your resume stand out, the fundamentals of resume building, like typeface and format, are important, too.
That's because the human resources professional who is reading it first is likely looking at hundreds of other resumes for the same position. You don't want to give them an excuse to toss yours into the waste bin at first glance.
Want to make sure your resume makes the first cut? Here are a few tips to help you make it happen.
1. Your Fonts, Their Sizes, the Resume's Margin
You definitely don't want to stand out because your one-page resume (it is one page, right?) has giant text all over it. Beyond making your name slightly bigger than all the other type on the page, everything else should be in either Times New Roman or Arial, and either 11- or 12-point size.
A resume is not your college term paper. You don't have to fill space with larger text just so it doesn't look empty. If you have the skills and education necessary for the job, you can submit a resume even if those skills and that education don't fill the whole page.
Conversely, if you have a lot of skills and education, you don't need to create extra space on the page by widening the margins -- keep them at a half-inch.
The employer doesn't need a list of every job you've ever had, just what's relevant to the position you want. Stay to the point.
2. Tell a Story
Many people will have a resume that puts them in a career and shows them growing in that field or industry. For military members, this may not be the case. Service members tend to move toward supervision as their careers progress, or some may reclassify into a different military specialty.
That doesn't really matter on your resume. Tailoring your work experience and education to the job for which you're applying is all about highlighting the growth you've experienced in that career field. By listing your jobs in reverse order, with the most recent position first, you should show that you've entered and grown within your industry.
Most importantly for veterans, your resume should show that you're loyal to a company once you've been hired. One of the top stereotypes about hiring veterans is that they have a high turnover rate for their first few jobs. Show the recruiters that that is not true for you.
3. Write Those Bullet Points
Under each job listing on your resume should be descriptions of your role, written in bullet points, just like those on enlisted performance reports (EPR). Like an EPR, the items should be listed in order of importance, and each bullet point should begin with an action-oriented verb.
But just because these two are similar doesn't mean you should get carried away and write an EPR. A hiring manager might scratch their head at the idea of a would-be bookkeeper who "spearheaded" things around their old offices.
For each point, list what you did and what the outcome was. Focus on achievements, not specific duties. The formula goes: Action + Problem Solved + Results. If you can back that outcome up with specific numbers or statistics that are sure to impress, add them there.
4. Proofread
Every written thing needs an editor. The article you are currently reading went through at least one, maybe two editors. Your resume should be no different. Have two friends go over it, and you should read it backward to try to catch spelling mistakes (it works, promise).
There are also a few things you definitely do not want in a resume, and it can all be summed up by asking, "Does this add to my value on this page?" Jargon, objectives, personal statements, references -- these are all space consumers that don't really add anything to your personal value.
5. Format
Does the company to which you're applying use Microsoft Office, or does it have a different suite of software in which to work? Maybe it is exclusively on Google Docs or uses a competitor's software. In this case, you can't really submit a Word document, because the hiring manager would have to upload it to Google Docs to read it.
The answer: Create a PDF of your resume and submit that. If you don't know how to create one from a Word doc or from Google Docs, you should look it up and learn how. This also has the added benefit of ensuring the person reading the resume will always see it the way you designed it to look, no matter what program they use to open it.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.
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