Welcome (or welcome back) to my YouTube channel! If you're new here, I post videos
to this channel every Monday to help you on your internship journey. Internships
were a big reason, if not THE reason, for my successful launch after college
graduation. And I'm on a mission to help you get the most out of your internships
as well. In today's video I am sticking to the resume theme that I started with
in last week's video. So go check that out if you haven't already. I will link
to that somewhere up here. I am going to cover 10 quick tips in today's video for
formatting your resume, plus I have a comprehensive resume readiness checklist
(way more than 10 tips) that goes along with this video. You can download a copy
of my checklist for free and make sure that you're checking things off as you
start to fill out your resume to make sure that you're not missing a thing.
I've linked the resume checklist in the description below this video, so go grab
that. Hey there, I'm Jenna Rein from theinternhustle.com, and this is
Initiative Muscle Monday. Helping you to start each week with an intentional step
toward a successful future. Let's do this! Alright, 10 quick resume formatting tips.
Here we go! Resume formatting tip number one - Use one
professional font and color throughout your resume. I recommend selecting a
serif font (you cannot go wrong with Times New Roman). And stay away from
random colors -- just keep it professional and stick to a black font. Resume
formatting tip number two - keep the font size consistent throughout the resume.
The exception to this is your name at the top of your resume. You can and
should use a larger font size to make your name stand out at the top. But
otherwise just use things like capitalization or bold formatting to
mark the different sections of your resume, like education or experience, and
help them stand out in that way rather than having to keep track of a bunch of
different font sizes throughout a resume. Resume formatting tip number three -
ensure that you are using formatting styles like capitalization, bold,
underline, italics consistently throughout your resume. For example if
you bold the title from one job, make sure that you
bold the job titles for all other jobs on your resume as well. Resume formatting
tip number four - maintain consistent spacing and text alignment throughout
your resume. This applies to the page margins too. Inconsistencies are going
to draw people's eyes away from the content of your resume, because they're
going to be jumping all over just trying to follow along. Especially pay attention to
the bullet points that you use and make sure that they are consistently aligned
throughout each section of your resume. Resume formatting tip number five - Modify
your content to avoid any single word on its own line. These take up valuable
space and they are also detractors when someone's reading through your resume
because there's a lot of white space around it and it just doesn't feel like
it aligns right. So think about how you can phrase your point differently, if you need
to rework the alignment of your sentence and get rid of those lines that only
contain one word. Resume formatting tip number six - spell out all acronyms or
abbreviations. These things can vary between jobs and industries and you
should never assume that someone knows what you're referring to. The best
practice is to spell it out in full and then follow that by the abbreviated
version in parentheses. So an example of this would be if you worked in the
healthcare industry, and for your job you handled protected health information - PHI -
you would write out protected health information and an in parentheses you
would put (PHI). Resume formatting tip number seven - when listing dates on your
resume, write out the full month so instead of saying 1/2018,
write January 2018. Resume formatting tip number eight - check to make sure that you
are using the proper verb tense for each role and the accomplishments that you
are referencing within that role. So all past experience should be written in past
tense and current experience to be written in present tense. Unless of
course you are referring to a project or task that you've completed already in
your current role and then you should also be using past tense there too. Resume
formatting tip number nine - Keep your resume to one page. If you need to make
more space on your resume, then you can play around with the margins. But make
sure that your margins don't drop below less than
half an inch. Then you're just really getting too
close to the edges of the page. Resume formatting tip number 10 - Use a plain
white background. Using color blocks or other graphic design elements can look
really bad when it's printed out, as it uses up a lot of ink and it often just
doesn't have the same look or clarity as it would on a computer screen.
An exception to this, or some of the earlier tips I gave you around using
consistent fonts and colors (meaning professional, black only), might be if
you're going for a creative position like graphic design or something else.
Use your best judgment, but know that there are positions and industries that
do allow for a little bit more flexibility and creativity in your
resume. But for everything else just keep it professional and use a plain white
background, and a black consistent font throughout, and you'll be good to go. So
there you go -- ten quick resume formatting tips to get you started. Don't forget to
download my free resume checklist that I have linked in the description below
this video. It includes these tips plus a lot more around how you should format
the various sections of your resume -- so things like your contact info, your
education, your work experience, plus even some optional sections that you may need
to include based on your circumstances. I've also included a sample resume
template that you can look over and some examples of what you need to finalize
before you hit send on your resume. If you found this video helpful, please give
it a like and share it with a friend or two. Your support helps as I continue to
grow this channel and produce even more content for you. So thank you! Don't
forget to hit subscribe on this channel so that you're in the loop as new videos are released.
Thank you, and I will see you back here next week.