Joyce Richman: How to shorten, strengthen your long-winded résumé
Joyce Richman: How to shorten, strengthen your long-winded résumé
You’re an attractive candidate. You have an excellent personality, a great smile and you exude positive energy. If you can get in front of an interviewer, you have the potential to do well. But you have to get there first, and right now your résumé is blocking the way.
Please don’t tell me it’s too long. I’ve spent hours on it and whittled it down from eight pages to four. I reduced the size from 12-point type to 8-point type and reduced the margins from 1 inch to half an inch. I can’t fit any more into it unless I use bigger paper and enclose a magnifying glass.
It sounds like you already know your résumé is too long and the print is too small. Instead of trying to hold on to what you’ve written that doesn’t work, hold on to what does — and that would be your solid experience with reputable companies.
So what’s my problem?
You are distracting the reader with too much information. You have included lengthy job descriptions and obscure jargon, and described processes that may mean something to insiders but that have no appreciable meaning to outsiders. The people who are reviewing your résumé are outsiders.
If I take all that out, I can probably get it down to three pages. What else should I cut?
You’ve dedicated 10 lines of type to your “career summary,” which is a restatement of what’s in your résumé. You don’t need it, so get rid of it.Consider it done. What else needs to go?
Say goodbye to all those seminars and workshops you have attended because we don’t know whether you slept through them or applied what you learned to your job. Delete professional membership organizations if you’ve been inactive for a long period of time or if your membership has expired. Leave in those organizations where you currently or have recently held a leadership role. Leave off memberships in religious and political action groups, despite any leadership roles. And don’t include references. Provide them only when requested by the employer.
OK, with those changes I’ve gotten it down to just over two pages, decent margins and 12-point type. Am I done?
Not yet. You have a few more things to do. For example, your name is in 36-point type. Take it down to 14. Your e-mail address looks like a pickup line. Change it to one that is more professional. You are also using too many fonts. Pick one and stick with it. Drop the italics because they’re hard to read. And — this is big — include an objective.
Why an objective? Isn’t it obvious?
It’s only obvious if you declare yourself. That’s why you need to state, right off the bat, what you want and are effective in doing, so that it matches what the employer has advertised it needs you to do. Do I have to change my objective every time I respond to a job advertisement?
Yes, be sure to use the same keywords in your objective and in the body of your résumé that the employer uses in the job advertisement. That is actually the purpose of a cover letter, but cover letters get detached from résumés all the time. Therefore, your résumé needs to stand on its own.
Joyce Richman is a career coach and author of “Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job” and “Roads, Routes & Ruts: A Guidebook for Career Success.” Read her blog at www.richmanresources.com and watch her latest career advice Wednesdays at 6:35 a.m. on WFMY News 2. Contact Richman at 288-1799 or JERichman@aol.com.
