Resume Preparation

Finding a Job IS a Job!

Preparing your Resume can be a long, tedious, frustrating task. Best to start before you need a resume ready – simply taking 30 minutes out of your night each week for a month can help you prepare. It’d be helpful if you could clone yourself. After all, you did have all those jobs, and each one was almost a different version of yourself… Then again, nothing motivates quite like the feeling you’ll be out of house and home, eating out of garbage cans and selling yourself for cash. So, it’s up to you. Here’s what you need to get started:

- A list of all your previous jobs (yes – I do mean ALL of them)
- A list of five people you consider “references”
- A list of five work-related accomplishments you are the proudest of
- Your educational history – including college, seminars, online courses, certifications, etc
- A 2-3 sentence statement about the kind of career you want to have and what you can bring to it
- Your e-mail address, cell phone number, and other relevant contact information

Lets go through each of these so you understand why you need them.

A list of all your previous jobs

Creating a list of all your previous jobs is a very valuable tool. Lets say you have a dual degree in finance and statistics. You want to apply for this cool job trying to prevent people from cheating at the lottery. It just so happens you worked at a job four years ago as a fraud analyst at a bank, but it’s only recently that “fraud analysis” and finance go together like Enron and, oh, say… defrauding little old ladies.

Now, if you’ve ever had to re-do your resume before, or custom tailor it for a different job market, you know the frustration of writing, re-writing, spinning, and fussing over remembering the little details of every past position you’ve ever had that might have been relevant to the new position you are applying for. Believe me, I feel your pain.

Creating a document with all of your employment history stops the frustration. This is the same logic we’re using for each section – it just makes things easier.

Each job should have the following information:

• Your Title
• Company Name
• Company Location (City, State)
• Date Started, Date Ended (usually the month and year are good enough)
• Key Achievements
• Key Responsibilities
• Short Description of Duties (2-3 sentence)

Now, keep in mind a little bit of formatting here: it is always good practice to avoid big chunks of text. Opt instead for the much more powerful and to the point bullet point.

Success means whenever you need to change up your resume, you have a handy file with all your previous jobs in it, complete with the skills and responsibilities and achievements you associated with each. What once was a five hour job is now a half-hour job. Go you!

Five People and Five Things To Speak About You

Everyone needs references – they should be honest people who like you, and don’t mind admitting it. Generally, these people should not be related to you. You should include such things as their mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, title, and how they know you. Five is a good number – you should put these into their own electronic document and save it as “First Name Last Name References” so you can easily e-mail it when you submit your resume somewhere.

For more information on References, you should read my article by clicking here.

Moving on, you need five career-oriented achievements. It’s okay if you can’t think of five, just make yourself a promise to become more awesome as you get more experience. These don’t have to be from a job, they can be from volunteer efforts for example, but they should reflect experience and success in a subject that somehow relates to your career choice. This should be a living document, so like a gunner adding notches to the riffle barrel, add your exploits to your document. This enables you to pick and choose each time you apply for a new job or position.

Edu…ed…imication Gitz You Far

Education doesn’t stop at college. Now, you might notice I say “college” a lot when talking about education. This is because with the influx of career training institutes, online educational facilities, and community colleges… there is absolutely no reason to avoid getting a college degree – at least an associates degree, but preferably a bachelors. This isn’t cheap, but the investment in yourself will allow your salary to far outpace whatever you had to pay for the degree. Besides, do you really need an excuse to go (or go back to) the place where hotties practically pour out of every building? Just remember, filming Girls Gone Wild is not a for-credit course, but is a great way to pay for college.

Anyway, as I said – education doesn’t stop at college. You have to continually improve and upgrade yourself in ways that you can put on your resume – whether it is taking an optional course at your college, training an employer sends you to, taking online skill evaluations (accredited only!) and so on. Each of these, depending on relevance, how recent it was, and how much you learned and can actually apply to your new job can net you anywhere between a $1,000 and $5,000 salary increase. Believe me – education is always worth the effort.

Where Are You Going?

Create a 2-3 sentence description of where you want to go in your career, what kind of career you want to have, and what you can bring to it with your skills. Visualization is the best way to see that you achieve your goals. Want to be a professional mud wrestler? Write down your skillz, hoss!

Here’s My Card…

Contact information changes all the time, but having it handy allows you to copy and paste it without having to type it out on every document you make. It also allows you to spell-, error-, and idiot-check your address and contact information before you put it on a resume. You’d be amazed how few responses you will get if you put the wrong phone number, e-mail address, or mailing address on your resume.

When in doubt, or if you don’t know your contact info, check the inside back of your underwear – occasionally your mom will have written it there for you! Good luck!