How to Write a Resume

Resume Rules and Advice

A resume is a marketing tool designed to highlight your strengths, training, and experience so an employer will schedule you for a job interview. Like any good marketing tool, it is designed for your particular audience. A creative resume will not work effectively with a conservative employer and vice versa. Your resume must look attractive and present your skills and training effectively.

• Limit the length. One page should be sufficient, unless you have extensive professional experience.
• Select resume paper that is light in color and has a fairly plain background so it can be copied, scanned, or faxed easily.
• Make sure that it is free of spelling, grammatical, and typographical errors.
• Print it using a laser printer or very clear ink jet printer.
• Limit the graphics. You can use lines, underlines, borders, bullets, and small drawings or photographs as long as the effect is visually pleasing, uncluttered, or related to your career.
• Since computers and scanners vary, you should save a copy of your resume in a text-only format so you can e-mail it easily or copy and paste it to a job web site. Many companies scan resumes, but scanners have difficulty with lines, graphics, and some fonts.
• Construct your resume using action verbs, adjectives, or keywords that describe your skills.
• Describe your accomplishments quantitatively where appropriate. For example: "Organized several health events with an average attendance of 300 students."

• Using the word "I' or indefinite or personal pronouns or articles such as "my," " our," "an," or "the."
• Lengthy job descriptions or descriptions of non-transferable job duties.
• Unrelated, personal information or photographs.
• Making statements you cannot back up with examples or proof.
• Redundancy.  If you have worked as retail clerk at three different establishments, do not try to describe it three times or in three different ways. You can either describe it once and not describe the others, or do something like this:

Retail Clerk, Nordstrom's, Sacramento, CA  May-Sep. 1999
                     Gottschalks, Chico, CA  Sep. 1997-May 1999
                     Sears, Sacramento, CA May-Sep. 1997
• Assisted customers to make selections through friendly and knowledgeable sales techniques.
• Merchandised products to appeal to clientele.
• Accurately processed cash and credit transactions.
• Trained new personnel using visual, oral, and hands-on methods.
• Tactfully resolved customer concerns.
• Received "employee of the month" award several times.

• If you have had several jobs, some related to your career goals and some not, you might try creating a "Related Experience" section near the top of your resume to feature your career-related jobs. Other jobs could be listed under the title "Other Experience" or "Supportive Experience and have much more concise descriptions."
• Creating a "Summary of Skills" list at the top of the page can be an excellent way to demonstrate your job-related skills immediately, especially if you are applying for a position for which you have received no formal training.

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This document is maintained by: Kathleen Bristow (kbristow@csuchico.edu)
Last Updated: September 26, 2007