As a professional interviewer and personnel supervisor, I guess I should cough up my two cents.
1. Keep objective concise and pertinent to the job applied for. Don't spread out the same resume for every job and company. You got a computer, just update the objective whenever applying for a different job.
2. Use plain white paper. Fancy marble print resume paper looks like crap when it gets faxed from the HR dept to the decision maker.
3. Outline important skills that you may or may not have used in previous jobs. Maybe Gateway never used your interest in quantum physics, but maybe NASA can't wait to get their hands on you.
4. Keep your job duties. By this I mean don't list skills and duties from past jobs in the past tense. "reseacrh'ed' yadayada, perform'ed' blabidyblah" You can still do these things and present tense is far more active- adds punch.
5. For God's sake- leave out the freakin hobbies and personal data.
Interviewers don't care if you enjoy playing ping pong with your wife of 23 years, Muffy your pet pomeranian show dog and your 2.5 kids. And pulease don't include a picture. (nothing against your style buddy) In this climate of equal opportunity, make it all about the skillz!
6. Keep it short. Aim for 1 page. Play with font size to make it fit, but don't make the interviewr get a headache. It's better to leave out the job delivering pizza then to go to a 6 point font. Do not include addresses or phone # on work history, and put personal references on a seperate sheet. Only give personal references when requested.
The idea is to wet the appetite of the HR manager and leave them wanting more. Make them get in touch with you. And if you do include an email addy with your header address, make sure it sounds professional. No one wants to hire bootyslappa69@hotmail.com!
Hope this helps and good luck my homie!
