How to Write a Professional Resume

The economy is not doing that much better than it was a few months ago. Gas prices are going up, food prices are rising, but yet many are still finding it difficult to find and secure a good job. Perhaps you have sent our your resume to hundreds of companies, and have yet to be called in for an interview; the solution to your problem maybe your resume.

I have been told from many employers that they were really impressed with my resume, and so I am going to share some of my resume writing tips for you, in hopes that it will help you write a professional resume.

HOW TO WRITE A PROFESSIONAL RESUME STEP ONE

First things first, you want to make sure that your name and contact information are clearly printed at the top of your resume. Now depending on the job that you are applying for, the layout of your resume may differ. You can align your name and contact information to the left, right, or center. I like to place mine in the center. I also make my name fairly larger than the rest of my type, about 16pt, maybe 18pts. Below my name, I place my mailing address, but in a pt or two smaller font than my name. PT is the size of the font; the font is the size of your letters. The higher the pt., the bigger your letters, or font will be. Now below your mailing address, place your phone number, and or fax number, and email address. This should be a pt or two smaller than your mailing address. It is very important that you have an email address, and a fax is not usually necessary, but it depends on your job. If you will be working from a mobile location, a fax may be important. You can get a free fax number, which will email your faxes to you from efax.com. Now to give your resume a nice professional look, I place a horizontal line underneath this information.

HOW TO WRITE A PROFESSIONAL RESUME STEP TWO

Now that you have your contact information typed, you want to write a brief summary about the type of employment, and company you are looking to work for. For example you can state, " Self-Directed, creative programmer, seeking fulltime employment with a company offering the opportunity for growth and personal advancement."

A second option would be to type a job summary, instead of your objective. The job summary gives a brief overview of what to expect on your resume, especially if you have been in the same field for many years. It could go something like, " Veteran Network Security Specialist with over twelve years of experience in Voice, Routers, Switches, and IT Administration.

HOW TO WRITE A PROFESSIONAL RESUME STEP THREE

I think that this next step is the most important aspect of your resume, besides using nice clean white paper. Do you have great job experience, or great skills? They are not the same thing. Or perhaps you graduated from a really great school, or the technical job you are applying for is really impressed with certifications. Depending on how you answered this question. This is what you want to put next. This is what catches the eye of the hiring manager. Resumes are not really read, word for word. They are kind of just scanned, and when something catches the eye, than it gets read. So place those certifications, with their appropriate dates, the really great school you graduated from, with your GPA, graduation date, and degree. Or place all those computer applications, and technical skills that you have next, than your job experience.

When you type this information, you want to include your job title, in bold, the name of the company, and the dates that you worked, than your job responsibilities.

It is best to keep your résumés to one or two pages at the most. This can be difficult. To do this, make sure that you only place job ten years or less on your resume, and only jobs relative to the position in which you are applying. You do not want to put your blockbuster video job, from high school, on your graphic design resume, unless it led you to graphic design is some sort of way, other than looking at the covers of the movie jackets. If needed you may want to reduce your font, but nothing smaller than 12pts.

HOW TO WRITE A PROFESSIONAL RESUME STEP FOUR

Finally at the bottom of your resume type REFERENCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST. If they want references, which they will, once you get the interview, they will ask for them. If you are applying for a job that may require you to showcase your creativity, you can try for a pastel blue or pink paper, to set yours aside from everyone else's, but it can be a bit of a risk.

Get those resumes copied, faxed, and emailed out to as many companies as you can. Make sure the area code, phone number, and email are correct, and wait by the phone, because I promise you, with this winning resume, you are going to get a job. Good Luck !