Fifteen resume writing tips

I’ve been doing a lot of recruiting lately, and there are a number of mistakes that I see again and again. Here are 15 tips for resume writing and two tips for the interview process.

Resume Formatting:

  1. Always include your name, phone number, email address, and the city and state where you currently live on your resume. Resumes are often extracted from one system and transferred to another, and if you don’t include your contact details on your resume, a recruiter who realizes they need to go back into some other system to find it may just decide not to bother. Including your city and state allows recruiters to check what timezone you’re in so they know when to call you.
  2. Run spell check! And make sure that you’ve set the correct language so spell check actually works.
  3. Whenever possible, provide your resume in PDF format. If you provide it in another format (e.g. Microsoft Word or RTF), it’s likely that it will be reformatted and the spacing will get screwed up.
  4. Test that your PDF resume doesn’t spit out a bunch of gibberish codes when converted to text, and that it include the important stuff like your contact info. A quick way to test this on Windows is to open your resume in a PDF reader, press CTRL+A to select all of the text, press CTRL+C to copy all of the text to the clipboard, then open Notepad and press CTRL+V to paste all the text. If you put your name and contact info in the header of the original document and it doesn’t appear in the pasted text, move that info from the header to the body of the document.
  5. Make the filename of your resume your first and last name and then the word “resume,” e.g. “Adam Marcus resume.pdf.”

Resume Content:

  1. Unless you’re applying for an academic position that asks for a CV, you should never submit a resume longer than 2 pages. When I’m reviewing resumes, if I see that it’s longer than 2 pages, I’m just going to skim it and will probably read less than if you just trimmed down the resume yourself. And I may not read the most important stuff. When cutting down a longer resume, you can either provide fewer details about individual jobs and/or consolidate multiple jobs into something like “January 2010 to July 2015 – Various Linux system administrator positions at small businesses in and around Detroit”. (And you can still include a bunch of bullet points under this single heading.)
  2. If you mention specific products (e.g. Salesforce, PowerPoint, or 7-Eleven), make sure you capitalize the name and use punctuation correctly. Do a Google search to double-check.
  3. If you refer to an application, department, or process that’s internal to an organization, don’t expect the reader to know what it is. This is especially true for acronyms. So instead of writing “Head of ABOG”, say head of school’s Academic Business Officer Group (ABOG).”
  4. Don’t write things like “a few years of experience.” Give hard numbers.
  5. Make sure you don’t have something like “Expected graduation 2016” when it’s 2018. If you can’t be bothered to update your resume, I can’t be bothered to read it.

Other Resume Tips:

  1. Have someone else proofread your resume. If you really can’t find someone else, wait at least a day after you update it and then slowly and carefully read it again. If you don’t find any mistakes, try reading from the bottom up. There will be mistakes. If you don’t find them, I will. And I will think less of you when I do.
  2. If you’re applying for a job that requires a security clearance or states that a security clearance is preferred, definitely mention if you have a clearance, even if it’s now expired. If you have never had a clearance, state whether you’re a U.S. citizen, which is a requirement for obtaining a clearance. This is especially important if you have a foreign-sounding name, attended a school in another country, or worked in another country. Stating that you’re a U.S. citizen may keep your resume from being discarded on the first review.
  3. Don’t apply to positions you’re clearly not qualified for. If a job posting says you need 3+ years of experience as a cybersecurity analyst and you have zero experience, don’t waste your time or the recruiter’s time. But if you only have 2 years of experience, include a cover letter explaining why you think you should be considered in spite of your limited experience. Maybe you did two internships that should also be considered experience. Maybe you had additional training that should be considered.
  4. If you have many years of experience, create a “master” resume that includes *everything* you think a potential employer may want to see, and then cut out the stuff that isn’t relevant to each different position you’re applying to.
  5. If you’re applying for multiple different types of jobs at once, create a different resume for each type of job. Just be sure that when you update something in one resume, you update it in all of your other resumes too.

Interviewing Tips:

  1. Other than scheduled interviews, don’t call the recruiter. If you realize that there’s something important you forgot to mention or ask during an interview call, send an email. If you haven’t heard back in two business days, send another email. If you still haven’t heard back after another day, only then should you pick up the phone.
  2. Don’t ask a question that you can answer yourself by re-reading the job description and/or the company’s website (if you know who the employer is). It makes the interviewer think you haven’t prepared for the interview and are not interested in the job. Instead of asking what the job involves, ask if they can tell you the approximate percentage of time they expect the hired person to devote to the different aspects of the job. Instead of asking what the company does, ask what markets it targets (if that isn’t obvious from the website).