Resumes are one method a prospective employer uses to get to know you. A well-crafted resume tells an employer about your qualifications and experience as well as demonstrates your professionalism, communication skills, and the quality of your work. The resume helps to create the employerТs first impression of you, and it either leads to an interview, or to a "we'll keep in touch" response.

What Resumes Should Contain:

Your resume should be unique, because it is a reflection of you, your experience, and your career goals. Your main goal is to clearly represent yourself and how you match the employer's needs. Each resume sent out should be targeted to the employer or type of position you are interested in. It will directly link your skills and background to the needs of the employer. Because employers have different needs to fill, you will have different versions of your resume
to send out.

Remember, your resume acts as the door-opener to get you into an interview in which you can further sell yourself and your skills. It is the appetizer, not the main course. This means that the information you include should whet the appetite of the reader to learn more, as well as satisfy some basic questions they might have. Listing everything you've ever done includes unnecessary information; only listing general job descriptions is vague and insufficient.

Keeping this in mind, following are some ideas on areas to cover in your resume:

Personal Information:

The Basics: Name, school and permanent addresses, phone numbers, e-mail address.
Optional: Fax number, home page URL.

Objective:

The Basics: Include on resumes distributed without a cover letter (a rare occasion!) your desired position, skills you wish to use, and field in which youТd like to work.

Education:

The Basics: Your current or most recent educational institution, location, degree received or expected, major or concentration, graduation date (actual or intended).
Suggested: Your school of study, thesis or major research project, study abroad experience, overall GPA (if above 3.0).
Optional: Your major GPA, relevant coursework, high school.

Work Experience:

The Basics: All relevant jobs, any recent jobs, title, organization, location, dates, brief description of duties using action verbs, major accomplishments or projects on the job.
Optional: Hours worked per week, specialized training received, honors earned.

Activities:

Suggested: Volunteer experience, college clubs, sports, professional associations.
Optional: Brief description of duties, title or role, dates, location.

Skills:

The Basics: Computer skills, programming languages, specialized skills unique to your field.Suggested: Foreign languages, computer, specialized training or certification.

Honors/Awards:

Suggested: Any unique or significant honors, awards, scholarships.
Optional: Qualifications for award, dates.

Other:

Optional: Interests, publications.

Final Product:

Your task is to put all this information into a clear, understandable format for your reader. Making your resume readable and relevant to the job is critical. Your resume should be brief and to the point. All resumes should have reasonable margins (approximately .75 to 1 inch), readable font sizes and styles, and clear headings and white space to separate sections. Make it easy on your reader's eye by avoiding large blocks of text and by using various styles to consistently highlight sections.

To create a scannable resume, use bold, capitalization, and indentation for emphasis; underlining and italics may make your resume unreadable by a scanner. Include keywords that employers might search by to identify candidates. For example, a resume for a software development job in a team might include some of the following words: programming languages, coding, Visual Basic, C++, teamwork, etc. Use a sans serif font, such as Times Roman or Helvetica, and stick to a font size of 10 to 14 points.

Once you have a completed draft of your resume, check off the following items:

The final version of your resume should be laser printed or type set. Avoid using dot matrix printers and typewriters; they result in a less professional-looking resume. Use heavy bond paper with a light color; white, ivory, and gray are recommended.

*The above Resume Basics information has been obtained from University of Virginia.