A successful resume helps you land a job interview, which hopefully leads to a job. The initial glance potential employers give resumes is as short as six seconds. To get the job you want, you need your professional resume to stand out that quickly.
Basic Resume Sections
Most professional resumes include the same basic sections. Start with a heading that includes your contact information, including email. Your name must be prominent. Make the details easy to navigate.
The professional resume also includes a section about your education. Include any university or technical school education. You do not need to include your grade point average but academic honors are acceptable. If you graduated recently and do not yet have much pertinent work experience, this section is likely to be located near the top of the page.
Resumes also include relevant experience. If you have worked in your chosen field before, highlight this fact. However, if you do not have relevant work experience, include in this section work and educational experiences that relate to the position you are seeking.
Optional Sections
The successful resume must be unique to you. As such, certain sections of the resume are optional. Include them only if they shine the best light on you. Career counselors are divided on whether you need to include an objective. The objective outlines for potential employers what type of work you are seeking. This is important if the rest of your resume does not make that fact immediately obvious. If you have years of experience in the field for which you are applying, omit the objective.
Professional resumes sometimes include outside activities or honors that you have received. Again, if your outside activities show your leadership qualities, organizational skills or other such business-related abilities, then you definitely want to include them. Likewise, include honors or awards that make you stand out from other applicants.
A skills section sometimes benefits your professional resume if you don't have a lot of work experience. In this section, include computer skills, research skills, foreign languages and the like. Be specific when listing these skills.
Organizing the Sections
Generally, there are two resume formats: the chronological organization and the functional organization. The format you choose depends on your experience and skill level. The chronological format is akin to a snapshot of your life. List your education and your work experience, in both cases starting with the most recent. This format is beneficial because it shows an upward progression of your education and experience when you are still new to your profession.
If you have gaps in your work history, have held unrelated jobs within the same field, or have held the same job for different companies, the functional format provides a better professional resume for you. With this format you highlight your skills and achievements without focusing on the timing. This format also has the benefit of putting the most pertinent information at the top, where quick-reading recruiters and employers see it first.
The goal of your professional resume is to land you a job interview. Tailor each resume to the specific position for which you are applying. Beyond the basics, the sections you include depend on what your strengths are in relation to the job you hope to land.
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