More lessons from editing resumes
A good friend of mine asked me to look over her resume. I don't have permission to repost it here, but I had some comments and thought I'd better summarize them.- She's after a job as an assistant office manager. The job description gives some characteristics of the person the company wants. She did a good job of pointing out in her resume, and emphasizing in a cover letter, the ways she exceeds the minimums in the position description. Give 'em more than they want.
- She says she's got experience with "the Internet and Windows XP." Both of those are broad, and she needs to tighten that up by giving specific examples of experience. I suggested that evidence of Internet experience could be provided in the resume if she shows either that she knows Web-creation codes (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.), or Web-creation programs (e.g. FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc.), or applications other than Web searching (e.g. FTP, e-mail list management, etc.), and she took advantage of that. As for Windows XP, she should demonstrate the basics, like disk cleanup and defrag, changing default printers, etc.
- She hasn't graduated yet, and lists "some college coursework," and gives the major. She needs to say how much she has left. She's got a good major -- it matches the company's interests -- and they may want her to finish up. Use even a partial education for leverage.
- She has impressive work experience for a young person, but needs to show examples of accomplishments, not just assignments. Something like "trusted with the responsibility of a customer service supervisor." And "managed insurance card and policy package distribution, as well as training meetings for sales agents."
- Finally, if the editing she does makes her resume longer, she must try to cut it back to a single page by making the font a size smaller or fiddling with the margins.
Labels: education, recommendations, rhetoric
posted by Ron @ 6:09 PM
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