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FOCUS: Successful résumés are focused, or targeted, towards a particular area of career interest.
1.
Is your résumé focused in the career direction that you desire?
2.
Are your relevant (value added) strengths highlighted effectively?
3.
Are your experience and abilities presented in a manner that gets the employers attention, holds their interest long enough for them to read the résumé, creates a desire to meet you in person, and convinces them to contact you?
4.
Has all unnecessary information been excluded? This includes age, marital status, number of children, health status, and most other types of personal information that can be used in a discriminatory fashion by potential employers. Your résumé should only contain these sections: Summary, Experience, Education and/or Training, Community Service, Professional Affiliations, and Interests. Not all of these sections are appropriate for everyone, and for specific fields, other sections not listed here may be appropriate. For most professions, you should never include a photograph on your résumé.
Yes
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FORMAT: Successful résumés are appropriately formatted, well organized, and free of all errors.
5.
Is your résumé in the format (chronological or chronofunctional/hybrid) that best maximizes skills and experience, while minimizing problematic employment history areas?
6.
Is your résumé visually appealing and easy to read? Are formatting elements such as white space, font sizes/types, bullets, and horizontal lines used appropriately? Are all the visual elements of your résumé well-balanced?
7.
Is your résumé absolutely free of errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax?
8.
Does your résumé completely exclude personal pronouns, which should not be used on formal business communications such as résumés? Are action verbs used effectively?
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CONTENT: Successful résumés include the information employers and recruiters want or expect to see.
9.
Is the résumé powerfully written, using correct, industry-specific language? Are appropriate keywords included to ensure your résumé is selected during an employer's search of their company's applicant database?
10.
Does your résumé include a track record of delivering specific, quantitative achievements?
11.
Does your résumé effectively demonstrate your professional worth and sell your potential as the best candidate?
12.
Does your résumé negate or lessen the impact of detrimental factors in your background? Are all employment gaps and/or education deficits handled well? NOTE: Never leave dates off a résumé! That is a red flag to employers that you are trying to hide something.
Yes
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Other Comments
13.
Is your résumé responsibility-oriented or achievement-oriented? Employers are looking for applicants who have a strong track record of scoring direct contributions to their previous employers' bottom lines. (Productivity improvements, cost savings, and revenue growth, for example.) You should track this information throughout your career and add it to future editions of your résumé, if you aren't already doing this. We also help our clients identify their career achievements.
14.
Does your résumé read like a laundry list of your job history? Your experience is important, but your ability to perform specific job duties is not an employer's only concern. Long paragraphs or bullet lists describing the mundane or redundant aspects of your job tend to overwhelm the reader. Instead, use your valuable résumé space to describe your significant duties and numerically quantify the bottom-line results of your achievements. To make your achievements stand out, use a paragraph under your job title for your responsibilities (with a maximum length of 10 lines), and a bulleted list underneath for your achievements (maximum of 8 bullet points).
15.
Do you have both visual (attractive) and electronic (plain) versions of your résumé? The plain text version is handy for applying for jobs via email and online forms. The visual version should be used in interviews, and when requested by an employer or recruiter. DO NOT rely solely on a plain text version.
16.
Is your résumé the appropriate length? Résumé should be 1 page (less than 5 years of experience) or 2 pages (5+ years of experience) in length MAXIMUM. The exception to this rule are CVs, a special kind of résumé used by medical and academic professionals.
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