Job Acquisition Strategy Part 2 - CV/Resume Basics

This is part 2 of Ghost Train's guide to improving your job marketability. In this section, I will go over some tips for your CV/Resume. Since the resume/CV is kind of important I will write one or two additional posts about it in the future.

Here is Part 1, in case you missed it: http://www.figure.fm/post/en/13464/Job+Acquisition+Strategy+Part+1.html

So let's get started.

I) Your Contact Information
This is common sense really, but just bare with me. The minimum contact info should be Full Name, Mailing Address, E-Mail, Contact Phone. This information is ideally placed at the top of the resume or CV.

You can include a link to your personal website or blog only if it adds value to your qualifications, say if you blog about tech and you're interviewing for an IT job. If you're interviewing for say investment banking, I would think twice about letting everyone know about my Gundam, Macross, Dollfie, etc. hobbies. (I'm sorry if this offends people, but people have preconceived notions about stuff) This would of course be different if you're aiming to work for a toy company. Don't give people more info than they need: remember, you want to control the flow of information, and not let someone else do it for you!

Just a few quick comments about e-mail addresses. If you are a student and have a school issued .edu address, I would suggest using your personal e-mail instead. Your school might disactivate your e-mail account access after you graduate. If a prospective employer contacts you after that time... then you're out of luck.

If there is some "notirety" associated with your current personal e-mail, ie. perhaps ease of link to some unflattering social networking content, then consider creating a new e-mail account for your job search. Also, if you have some ridiculous incredi-bad e-mail address (MioisMaiWaifu86@domain.com) I would suggests just getting a new one as well. When picking your account name, go with dot notation:
homer.j.simpson@springfieldpower.com.

II) General Formatting Tips
A CV or resume is supposed to be a list of your accomplishments, talents, and qualifications, as such it should have a "list-like" feel. Do not write in prose (paragraphs)! Consider again the list analogy. If you were buying groceries you could write:

Shopping List Mk I
I am going shopping for food today, and will stop first to buy some apples, then move on to the next lane and pick up a loaf of bread, and finally a bottle of soda from the last isle.

Or:

Shopping List Mk II
- Apples
- Bread
- Soda

Even though I'm a right-brained person, I much prefer Option B because of its simplicity and ease of reading. Because you are conveying very atomic events and accomplishments, prose is just not very effective here.

Thus, the best way in my opinion to list items on a CV or resume is in a bullet point format. Each bullet-pointed item should roughly be the length of a sentence. I will refer to these bullets as "the stuff."

III) The Stuff
Ok, so how should you present the stuff? Or more basically what is the stuff? A stuff is 1 accomplishment (or a group or related accomplishments) that you performed while working, volunteering , helping an organization.

The best way to present each of these thoughts is to use the CAR format, which stands for Challenge, Action, and Result. The acronym is fairly self descriptive: you had a situation or challenge, you did something to remedy the situation, and something good (hopefully) came out of it.

Consider the following example:

Non-CAR description:
- Responsible for redesigning and maintining club website.

So this is a start, but needs refinement. From this, I gather that you have some form of basic knowledge on XHTML and graphics editing, but I really have no clue on how good you are. Furthermore, the last guy told me the exact same thing... so let's try CAR.

CAR version:
- Responsible for maintenance of club website, and the introduction of design changes that greatly improved user interface, increased site traffic, while decreasing down time.

You have described a situation: where you have been tasked to be some sort of webaster, you described what you did (maintain and new design) and what that accomplished: better user experience, improved traffic, etc.

Ok, so this example assumes that said person was actually quite a pro-active person and actively set out to make their organization a better place. You might not always have had this attitude and thus sometimes the three parts of CAR are represented unevenly. But you should try your best reflecting upon how your past contributions have created value!

IV) Layout:
I will discuss this in a bit more detail next time. But generally you want a header with your name and contact info, a section describing your education, a section describing your employment history, and an "Additional" section where you list specific skills (i.e. additional human or programming languages) not specifically addressed in other sections. This is also a place to list certifications or acreditations you might posses.

I will end this part here to prevent the posts from being too tldr. The next 2 posts will probably still be about resumes as it's an important topic. Please feel free to share your tips, suggestions, or disagreements. Until next time and take care!