Your resume is an ad, not a biography. Sell yourself, and write a resume that shows where you want to go, not where you've been.

Keep It Short

If you're lucky, the recruiter will spend a minute with your resume the first time they see it. More likely they'll scan it for 20-30 seconds. So:

• Keep your resume to a page
• Tailor it to the target market
• Make your goals clear
• Make your value added clear

CARTL, CLARIT, and PIPIS

Make a list of the skills your industry or job posting asks for. Now break them down into the most frequent, fundamental attributes your potential employers will be asking for. For each attribute, list your relevant expertise.

CARTL is an acronym for some common fundamental, transferable skills:

• Communicate
• Analyze
• Research
• Teamwork
• Leadership

CLARIT is another acronym:

• Communications
• Leadership
• Analysis
• Research
• Initiative
• Teamwork

These are actually pretty common combinations for marketing. But develop your own acronym!

PIPIS is a little different kind of acronym; it shows the 5 developmental experiences that recruiters love:

• Problem-solver
• Initiator
• Project Manager
• Influencer
• Scope

Place the words from these acronyms next to the bullet points. Make these transferable skills stand out!

The Three Components Of A Resume

Take out a piece of paper. Draw two lines down it, dividing the page into three roughly equal columns.

Down the left you have your company names and job titles.

The middle has your descriptions of what you acutally did. This is where you throw in your jargon.

The right has the results. This is the most important part. Throw in numbers to provide proof! And show who had the result? Was it you -- "My reforms saved the division 30%"; was it the team -- "Our report led to a new product"; was it the company "QA saved the company 35%"? Here's the order in which you want to highlight accomplishments:

1. Me
2. Team
3. Department
4. Company

Now put all this in your resume. Your resume will actually look pretty similar to this prep document: You'll probably have job titles and companies on the left, dates on the right, and the real meat down the middle.

Writing Tips

Format:

1. Company
2. Title
3. Scoping Statement
4. Bullet Points

Scoping statements introduce an employer, if necessary, summarize your role there, highlight your transferable skills, and provide perspective on your experiences there. You can also use a scoping statement to highlight specific, action-oriented experiences you had at that company.

Those bullet points should support the scoping statement. Put the most important ones first! Present your action and its result (or result first, then action), emphasize your transferable skils, use powerful and clear action verbs and exceptional words to make yourself stand out.

Fill it with jargon, that'll get you past the initial scan.

Always answer the $64,000 question: "so what?" Tell them so what. This may include using lots of phrases like "in order to...", "saving...", "resulting in..." etc. That's ok, answer the question before the recruiter asks it.

Other than the phrases above, avoid the word "to". It's pedestrian. Use the present participle or and + the past participle instead.

Use K for thousand, M (or mm) for million, B for billion.