January’s coming around the corner! What that means is that the race to find that perfect summer job or internship is almost here. But before you start sending out job applications to every Craigslist posting that you find, there are quite a few things that you have to take into consideration. Your resume, aside from your cover letter, is the most important item. In fact, it’s the only chance that you have to make an impression on your potential employer. Having looked over many of my friend’s resumes and having revised mine many times (keep in mind that mine isn’t perfect either), I’ve collected a few tips and got some pointers that should be of great help. Instead of writing one lengthy post on everything, I will be focusing on one point at a time. In this post, I will cover what I feel to extremely important in determining whether or not your resume should be read - layout.
Like anything else you read, you’d expect it to be eye-catching and easy on the eyes, so why not your resume? Mind you, when I say eye-catching, I don’t mean including pretty pictures and printing on scented paper. What I am referring to is the correct use of subheadings, spacing, and font sizing. Having a poorly crafted layout will result your resume being put through the paper shredder.
Separating the highlights of your work experience from your education, and from whatever other miscellaneous information you choose to include, subheadings are meant to be used as dividers. Often, I find that people retain the same font style for their subheadings as they do for their bulleted points. Pressing the enter button is not going to make the divisions any more noticeable. Add a little variation! Increase the font size or change, make your subheadings in all capitals, bold the text, or even change the color of your text to a darker grey. These small changes are the nuances needed to make your resume stand out a bit more.
One of the most important aspects with regards to format is spacing. Learning to leave enough space between sections is one thing, but also learning to leaving enough space between bullet points is another. As much as one thinks that reducing the line spacing is a great way of jamming more information into that one page, it is also a surefire way to make your resume cluttered and impossible to read.Tying in with font size, make sure that your information is readable. No one wants to have to run down to the pharmacy to grab a magnifier or reading glasses to read your qualifications. Make sure that both your spacing and sizing is done well enough so that you are able to read your resume clearly from a fair distance (i.e. you should be able to read what you have written without having to strain your eyes or putting the sheet centimeters away from your eyes).
Usually, most people do not use anything smaller than a size 10pt font. For your header though, where you state your name and contact information, feel free to make that slightly larger so as to make sure that the reader knows how to get a hold of you.
Well, that’s it for the format portion of this series. Tata for now!
Tags: Cover Letter · Impressions · Resume · WorkNo Comments
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.