Happy Monday! Daylight Savings is here and I am totally thrown for a loop now that it's so dark outside when I wake up. It makes me want to stay in bed forever! At the same time, I know that the time change also means that it will be light out so late, and that means that warm weather is coming!
I have wanted to share my resume and job searching advice for a while now, and since I am back in the thick of the job search process, I thought it would be perfect timing to share. Today, I wanted to talk about a few tips I have specific to the formatting of your resume that really make a difference!
Stick to one page | When you are first joining the workforce, you should absolutely stick to a one-page resume! Longer CVs are great when you have years of work experience behind you and can talk about work that you have done for years, but as a new graduate (or even student) only include one page of information on the most relevant skills and experiences. Think through any past jobs, extracurriculars, and skills you gained from college that are actually relevant to the position but don't include anything that doesn't apply to the job you are looking for. For example, I was a member of a club within my major during college but I wasn't the most involved and didn't hold any leadership, so I opt not to highlight it on my resume where space is limited.
Clearly state your contact information | Make sure that your name, phone number and email are clearly listed at the top of your resume. When sending my resume on the computer, I always hyperlink my email address for easy replies and share my general location. I don't use my full address for safety reasons but always state my location (ie. Greater Los Angeles area) so that companies can know that I am in the same area where the company is located.
Use the right tense | When talking about your current experience, always use the present tense to describe what you do! This gives your resume a more active tone and helps showcase what you are doing and working on in your current role. However, when you mention something that you did in a previous role, you should always use the past tense to match the fact that you are no longer in that position.
Choose the right font size | It's easy to make the font size super tiny when writing your resume if you want to fit as much as possible on the page. But remember that someone on the other end of the line will be reading what you write! Either on paper or the computer, you want the font size to be something that will be legible to anyone who has to look at your documents.
Create a separate section for non-job experience | On my resume, I have a section specifically for work experience, but another that is dedicated to 'additional experience' that includes leadership roles I had during college and organizations that I joined where I developed skills specific to my career. I like organizing my resume this way because it allows me to still mention non-work experience as a recent graduate. I also have heard from a few people that this way of listing my experience is unique and it can help amplify my work experience as a new member of the workforce.
PDF vs. Word Document | Most of the time, I save my resume and cover letters in PDF format because it saves the formatting and will look the same on any computer. However, I have heard that it's better to use the Word format of your resume when it will be read by computer software since some softwares cannot read PDFs. I have not been able to test this theory myself, but I am going to do some more researching and report back! Another note on this is that I have heard the same thing about putting information in the header or footer of your document because some softwares cannot read those areas of the document, only the body. This could be important if you put your contact information in this section since a computer program then might not register any of your contact information. I'm definitely going to do some more testing of this theory but wanted to put it out there in case anyone was interested.
