When it comes to resume formats, a practical one beats a fancy one to land more interviews.
The resume you send an employer is your one chance to make a great first impression. As
your career highlight reel, it shows off your true skills. We’ll look at resume formats
and how to set yours up so that it makes a great first impression. I’m Jen with The
Career Force. We help smart, career minded professionals stand out in today’s job market.
We cover all things related to career, from resumes to interviews, to negotiating your
salary. Check out our new videos each week, or subscribe and turn on notifications so
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When comes to resume format, the most basic guideline is how long to make your resume.
It’s incredibly common for people to make their resumes either way too long or too short.
Usually it’s too long. Recruiters spend an average of six seconds looking at each
resume before they determine whether they want to read more or if you’re not the right
candidate for the job. You really want to keep their interest. How long should your
resume be? If you have less than 5 years of career experience, stick to 1 page. You should
be able to summarize all the important points within that page. If you have between 5 and
about 25 years of career experience, extend your resume up to 2 pages. It doesn’t have
to be 2 full pages. Just use whatever is needed to convey the necessary information. With
more than 25 years of experience, especially if you’ve been in a lot of different roles
in your career, you can extend your resume to up to 3 pages. Again, it doesn’t have
to be 3 pages. Use as much as necessary to convey the right information. Make sure your
resume is function before it’s flashy. We’ve seen an internet trend of beautiful resumes
that also are never going to land you a job. While beautiful is great in a creative industry,
in most professional careers, your priority should be on the content, even if means that
the format may look a bit boring to you. Let your resume content, and not the format be
the part that’s really unique to you. Here are a few tips that will help make sure your
resume is functional.
Use a standard font like Times New Roman or Arial. Use standard margins. ¾ of an inch
to 1 inch are fine. Use a font that is easily readable. This means font size of 11 points
or higher. Anything smaller gets a little difficult to read, so don’t try to game
the system by putting a 5 point font just so you can fit more information on the page.
Don’t just use acronyms alone. Anytime you put an acronym on your resume, also include
the words written out. This makes sure that whichever way the applicant tracking system
is set up, your resume is identified as a match. Arguably, the most important part of
any resume is optimizing it for applicant tracking systems. If you’re not sure what
they are, I’ve linked to a recent video that will explain everything you need to know.
Are you in the middle of editing your resume and coming up with some specific questions?
Leave them in the comments below, and I’ll be sure to respond. Your resume should be
free of errors and clearly communicate your strengths. This means check for punctuation,
grammar, and spelling errors. In theory you have an unlimited amount of time to perfect
your resume before you submit it for a job. If employers see spelling, punctuation, grammatical
errors, they may wonder if you’ll experience even more issues once you’re in the job
and you’re under the pressure of a tight deadline. If you don’t feel comfortable
editing your resume yourself and you want some help, check out the link below to find
out more about our resume services. If you want more insights to help you with your resume,
interview, and salary negotiation, check out the link below for our guide on landing your
next job. Thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.