Résumé Help: Formatting the Professional Experience Section
The reader of our featured résumé may be frustrated by the poor formatting, grammatical errors, and inconsistency of punctuation and verb tense. The good news is those are all things we can easily correct. Below is a “before” and “after” of a portion the résumé.
The font is very small and difficult to read. On my screen some of the letters even appear to blur together. A larger size and a font with more articulated letters will be easier on the eyes. The language is very sparse with bullet points consisting of three-word phrases. It’s a quick read, but not enough information to sell the client. Let’s put things in perspective and show the reader that the candidate works for a prestigious international company with locations worldwide. We’ll layout the company name, description, job title, and dates on three lines to give each bit of information prominence on the page.
Now for the meat of the job, we want to have two distinct sub-sections. First we will create a summary of what the candidate’s responsibility and duties are in a narrative format. We’ll keep it brief. A summary with less than five to seven lines (depending on how recent the experience is) is best. Next, we grab the reader with between three and seven bulleted accomplishments. These should include measured results whenever possible. In this case, the experience is several years ago, so we limited the section to three lines in the summary and three bulleted statements. Additionally, the verbs should be consistently in past-tense for this past position.
When you read the before and after, which one do you think will result in more interview requests? For more tips on formatting other areas of your résumé, review this blog entry: Résumé Help: Sales and Marketing Job
To see additional résumé suggestions that will help you as you create your own résumé, please click on the image below.
If you would like a résumé critique, please contact Debra Wheatman at debra@careersdonewrite.com or visit us at http://careersdonewrite.com. The Résumé Help blog appears weekly on Mondays.
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