HR Corner: Resume tips

Metropolitan State University students typically are attending classes to enhance their career. Even if you are not looking for a new job currently, it is important to keep an updated resume on hand in case an opportunity comes up or you need one to give a possible new business contact.

Here are five tips to the perfect resume:

Contact information: Include an e-mail address. On that note, make sure that your email address is professional. School e-mail addresses or generic addresses that include all or part of your name are acceptable; hotfox@hotmail.com is not. One of the first things the Human Resource representative looking at your resume is going to see is your contact information. If your e-mail address is unprofessional, your resume may end up in the trash.

Relevancy: Is your resume relevant to the job you are applying for? Most of the time HR reps are looking for the specific things they advertised for in the ad you are responding to. Not only that, but they are looking at the objective statement to make sure that you pay attention to detail and were meaning to send that resume to them. If you send a resume out to 20 companies, make sure to take the time to change your resume to meet each company’s qualifications. Most people that get the jobs they are looking for will have multiple resumes they will use to apply for those jobs.

Too long or too short: Make sure your resume is the right length. If you have extensive work experience your resume should be a length that will reflect that. If you are just starting out, employers want to know you have a work history, but they don’t want to know about the summer job you had as a lifeguard when you were sixteen (unless you’re applying to be a lifeguard). In the case of just starting out, one page is more than enough. If you must go more than one page, make sure you can fill two. No HR rep will get past the first page if there is only one sentence on the second.

Format: Make sure your resume is easy to read. Don’t use odd fonts. Don’t use ten-point font. Don’t use all of your margins. Make sure that when your resume is printed it is easy to read. Include lists that are bulleted. Make the information easy to follow. Use headers and differentiate!

Cover Letter: Resumes are not nearly as formal as they were years ago, which can be easily blamed on e-mail. The biggest mistake a lot of job seekers make when submitting a resume by email is not including anything in the e-mail body. Employers may not want a formal cover letter, but they still want to know you are a professional. It is important to include at least a paragraph introducing yourself and also to let the receiver know that you are not a junk mail message. If you don’t include anything it’s a good bet you might be deleted as spam.