Resume Tips

Nobody cares about you |  Use plain text |  Use basic hygiene |  Avoid weasel words
Avoid fat words |  Don't say expert |  Don't tip your hand
Don't be boring |  Don't be a liar

Nobody cares about you

At least not yet. Resume screening is a matching game. Do you have the skills or background they're looking for? Is your resume easy to scan visually? Is it cluttered with things about your personality and life adventures? Employers care about two things: experience and education. Therefore 95%-98% of your resume should comprise these two things. Experience should focus on measurable impact; present it something like this:

A resume screener's function is to make a fast go/no-go decision about you, and then forget about you. Seriously. They need to move on to the next resume. The best thing you can do is not talk about yourself. That is, your hopes, fears, goals, dreams, ambitions, hobbies - DELETE. (FYI, your resume will get shorter.) Cover letter? Use a short email letter stating, a) what position you are seeking, b) why their organization, c) what makes you especially suited for that position and that organization, and d) how you will follow up with them.

People will start caring about you in later phases of the recruiting process.

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Use plain text

If you anticipate that your resume will be run through an automated screening system - and many are - then nonstandard characters such as bullets and accented characters will be replaced with question-marks:

Consider writing with plain text, as if using an old-fashioned typewriter. New lines and single spaces are the only type of white space that remains intact; tables, tabs, bolding, italics often lose their formatting. The above text could be typed as:

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Use basic hygiene

That means use spell-check, grammar-check, style-check. Otherwise people will assume that you don't care enough about quality to spend 20 seconds pressing a couple of buttons to proof your mistakes. Lazy. Keep verb tenses consistent in paragraph sentences. For instance, never say: "implemented marketing program that generate 20% revenue growth." Past tense is preferred: say generated.

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Avoid weasel words

Weasel words say that you performed something significant when you actually didn't. Examples include: participated, analyzed, studied, learned, observed, watched. Nobody wants to hire someone with extensive experience observing work occurring. People get hired that have actually DONE things.

Resume screeners look for non-weasel words, a.k.a. productivity words. These are good words. You can't weasel out of these words when someone asks about them. Examples include: implemented, developed, delivered, launched. A word such as "designed" is ok if followed up with a productivity word. Make sure you learn how to design and implement.

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Avoid fat words

Fat words inflate your perceived importance and are indicators of inactivity. They are like adjectives on a restaurant menu; they serve as "fluff" for the purpose of making a dish sound delicious: Grand Cured Spice Rubbed Apple Smoked Wild Alaskan King Salmon. Salmon is the only part being eaten. A common example is, "architected;" replace this word with "designed."

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Don't say expert

"A friend of mine at Amazon once told me that he takes resumes that list 'expertise' and he tells the candidate something along these lines: 'Wow! You don't often find true experts in fields like this. I feel like I've found a kindred spirit here. I don't often do this, but I'm going to pick one of these technologies you're an expert at, and we're doing to do an incredibly deep technical dive on the subject. But before I start, is there anything you want to take off the resume?'"
- from Steve Yegge's blog

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Don't tip your hand

Resume writing is like dating, or applying for a bank loan; nobody wants you if you're desperate. Appear confident and competent regardless of your skill level, experience, or eagerness for employment. Don't apply for 5 jobs in one sentence. "Objective: Highly personable, results-oriented business graduate seeking opportunity to lead or contribute individually on projects or programs involving marketing, advertising, event planning, management or other initiatives while utilizing my broad background in problem-solving to do any job you give me..." This screams desperation. Instead send 5 different resumes, each targeting a separate job. If you use an objective (btw, it is not required) be specific; state the job type and organization being sought. Keep it short and to the point.

More signs of desperation: "eager to learn," "fast learner," "motivated." Don't say these things; it smacks of unskilled labor and ignorance. The best way to sound non-desperate is to be non-desperate. Do this by lowering expectations and not applying for jobs that you're not qualified for. Make a clean resume that sticks to the bare facts about your skills and accomplishments.

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Don't be boring

Examine your resume and delete anything that seems obvious or superfluous. If you worked at a well-known firm, don't spend time explaining what they do.

Be specific. Don't say "managed several small projects." That's useless and uninteresting. If the projects were too small to detail, then don't mention them at all. Say what you did. Don't repeat information from section to section. It is irritating. Your goal is to cover your entire academic and professional career in a way that makes it easy for screeners to match up your skills and accomplishments with things they recognize. It's a checklist. When in doubt, provide more information, not less. But make the information concrete! There's nothing wrong with longer resumes if the information paints a vivid, captivating portrait of your capabilities.

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Don't be a liar

And don't exaggerate. You'll get caught. This usally isn't a problem with Biola candidates. In fact, the opposite is often the case - not enough confidence emerges from many Biolan resumes. Do your best to give an estimate of proficiency for every skill on your resume. Better yet, weave examples into your resume on how you've used specific skills to bring about quantifiable results.

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Abridged and modified from:
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/09/ten-tips-for-slightly-less-awful-resume.html.
Steve's version is more eloquent, funny and longer. Note that many of his words and titles were modified to fit Biola's culture.