Career – Activity: Update Your Resume
This week, create or review your resume. Look at the appearance and content and insure that this career tool will create the best possible positive impact. A video from Illinoisworknet provides a good overview.
Appearance:
- What format is the best choice? Make a decision between Chronological, Functional, or a combination. The Chronological format is generally preferred by employers.
- Does it look good? Do you make good use of white space, fonts, bullets and lines to organize and emphasize? Is it good quality printing and paper? It’s usually best to keep resumes to one page.
Content: Gather information to type with this printable form (pdf) from Hatch Staffing.
- Identify your work skills.
- Is all information current? Is everything spelled correctly?
- Is information presented positively? Use action verbs, write clearly and concisely.
Outside the Box: Venturing beyond traditional advice is the visual resume (visualcv.com), or video resume.
Tools:
- The Resume Workshop from Purdue University is a good guide to the whole process.
- Vertex42 has free Word templates and a 2 page printable tip page.
- “Resumes, Applications and Cover Letters” is a free printable 66 page U.S. Government publication with basic information about these tools.
- Publications at Wisconsinjobcenter.org
- Information on resumes at UNC
- ResumeBuilder-free online resume tool
- CareerZone Quick Resume
This is one of the weekly activities for a Year of Personal Development.
I enjoy finding great information, combining it in new ways, and packaging it creatively. I'm highly interested in the areas of goal setting, time management, and skills to improve life.
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