How to Make a Good Resume

Even if you're just starting out in your field you still want a professional resume that will clearly show any hiring manager what you can bring to the table. 

What is a Resume?

A resume comes from the French word, résumé, meaning outline. Now we spell it without the accents and use it to refer to an outline of our work history, expertise, and skills. 

"Resume" is pronounced re-zeh-may, or ˈre-zə-ˌmā if you understand the phonetic alphabet. Either way, you can easily listen to the pronunciation of the word at Merriam-Webster.com.

Resume Objective

The objective of a resume is to show a potential employer, an easy-to-read, brief outline of why you qualify for the job. They want to see a quick glance at your career, accomplishments, and what skills and qualifications you've gained so far. 

It is a formal document showing your professional life thus far, that a potential employer uses to make an educated decision about whether you merit an in-person interview or not. When creating a resume you'll want to make sure it includes all the information an employer would need to make this decision. 

Create a Master Resume

It's a good idea to create a Master Resume where you simply write everything you could ever put on a resume. You want a master resume because different jobs are going to necessitate you include different information, depending on the job. 

For instance, if you're applying for a job where you'll be designing someone's website, you won't need to include the cashier job you had as a teenager. But if you're applying for a job in customer service, then the employer will want to know that you have that customer service experience as a cashier. 

You also only want your resume to be a page long, but a resume with absolutely all the experience you've ever had in your life is going to eventually be longer than a page, so keeping all this information in one place on your master resume is a good idea to have as a reference. 

Resume Sections

There are a few key sections that go into every professional resume. Once you have a master resume to work from you can start putting everything into these main sections. 

Personal Info

Somewhere near the top of your resume, you want to put your name on the center stage of your resume so the employer can easily know right away who they are looking at. Then you can kind of introduce yourself briefly by including a personal bio section that may list your personal interests and hobbies. If you're including a cover letter on the front of your resume, you can also put this personal introduction there instead. 

Contact Info

You'll also want to include your preferred contact information on your resume. This information is usually so that they can contact you in case they want to offer you a job interview, so make sure you put down the best way for them to contact you for this. Usually, this includes your phone number and email address. 

Your email address on a resume should be simple and professional. If you don't already have an email username with your name instead of a TV reference, then it's time to make one for professional purposes like this. 

You can also include other ways for them to get to know you and see your qualifications if those apply for you. If you have a personal website or an online portfolio you can include that here too. You can also include any professional accounts you have, like your LinkedIn profile. 

Experience

Here is where you outline your job history. You don't necessarily need to include every job you've ever had, sometimes it makes more sense to show the work experience that most applies to the job you're applying for now. 

You also want to list your work experience in reverse chronological order, meaning that the job you had most recently goes first, and the oldest job experience goes last. This way you are putting the most relevant information, the most recent and therefore most applicable information upfront. 

When listing each job you'll want to include the following information: 

• Job title (the title you had at this job) 
• Company name
• Location
• Job description (what were your main duties at this job, and what did you accomplish there)

Education

This section is where you outline your education. Many people have questions about what to include and not include in the education section, like when do you stop putting your high school education on your resume? Once you have a bachelor's or associate's degree you are usually ok to stop including your high school education on your resume. 

Your high school education is a basic education that everyone receives, so there really isn't anything specific about it that applies to your future job. 

And once you've officially gained some form of higher education an employer can easily assume you also have a high school education, but it's what you did in your higher education, what you studied and learned specifically there, that interests them now. 

• When listing your education you want to include the following: 
• The name of the school 
• The years you were there
• What degree you have (associates, bachelors, masters), and in what 

If you haven't finished college yet you can include your estimated future graduation date and what you are studying, meaning your majors and minors. 

Achievements

You don't have to just put down jobs that you've had though, also put down any other achievements, accomplishments, awards, or community involvement that might be important for employers to know. 

If you've published anything before here is the place to list that. Any volunteer work you've done. Any licenses, certificates, or other special training you may have, including if you speak another language. 

Skills

When making your skills section the first thing you want to do is look into what skills are involved in the job you're looking for. Job ads usually list the kinds of skills they are looking for in an applicant. If any of these skills apply to you be sure to include them.

The skills section should include both hard and soft skills. 

Hard skills are specific abilities and knowledge that you have, like knowing how to use Photoshop. 

Soft skills are useful attributes, like being organized or friendly. 

Then, if you have room, don't just list these skills, but provide examples to show how you do indeed have these skills. These examples can also be included on your cover letter instead, where you'll have more room to tell key experiences that prove you have these skills. 

For example, if one of your skills is that you know how to use Photoshop, you can also say that you used Photoshop to design a poster in your most recent job. Or if you list that you are organized, you can briefly talk about how you created a new filing system at your last job.  

Designing a Resume

You can make your resume on Microsoft Word, on Google Docs, or even online. Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs have free-to-use resume templates that can also work as good examples of how to professionally format your resume. 

Resume Template Websites

• My Perfect Resume
• Resume Help
• Resume Now
• Resume Nerd

How you design your resume is how you're going to make your resume stand out. But this doesn’t mean you should make your resume flashy, in fact, you should do the opposite. 

Your resume's audience doesn't want to be distracted by too many colors or graphics, they want to focus first on the information that is most important, so center your design around the information itself. 

Create a Path for the Eye to Follow

You want your resume to be easy to read. One way to accomplish this is to create a path for your reader to follow. We read left to right, so this path tends to make a kind of Z shape on the page. 

Make it Organized

Use bullet points to help organize your lists. Use headings with a clear heading hierarchy so the sections and subsections are clear. 

Use a 10–12 Point Font Size

This way your font size won't be too small to read, but it also won't be silly looking by being too large. 

How to Make a Resume for a First Job

If you are making a resume for a first job as a college student or graduate, or as a teenager or high school student, then you may not have a lot of experience yet to fill out your work history. A resume for someone just entering the job arena is often called an entry-level resume or a student resume if you are still going through school. 

But the experience section of your resume isn't just for your work history. You can put all kinds of other useful experiences there as well. You can list programs, clubs, and organizations you've been a part of, volunteer work you've done, or internships you've worked for. 

You can list these items in the same way you would list a job, including the following information: 

• Your Title (Volunteer, Club Secretary)
• Company/Organization Name (National Honors Society)
• Location
• Description (what were your main duties, what did you accomplish)

Another approach you can take to fill out your resume as an inexperienced student is to make your resume more skill-focused than experience-focused. If you can't list any jobs then you can list different skills you have and describe how you gained those skills.

How to Make a Resume for College

If you’re in college, or freshly out of college, you may also run into a unique problem when creating a resume. Your experience section is also going to look different because you may not have a lot of jobs to list. But college provides tons of exceptional experiences that you can include in a resume instead of jobs. 

You can list internships you’ve done or apprenticeships. You can talk about capstone classes and the major projects and research you did for these key courses, and show how these classes have prepared and trained you for a job. You can also talk about any programs, clubs, and organizations you were a part of during your college career.

In the accomplishments section, be sure to include all the certifications you’ve received while in school. Today, successfully obtaining degrees and certificates from your college classes can mean a lot to a potential employer. 

If you received any awards, special honors, or published your work in a student journal you can include these kinds of accomplishments as well. You can even include your GPA in your college resume if you have a particularly high GPA to boast about.

How to Make a Cover Letter for a Resume

It is always a good idea to include a cover letter when you send an employer your resume. A cover letter is formatted like a formal letter consists of these main points, 

• Your name
• Your contact information 
• The date 
• Professional greeting 
• A brief paragraph about yourself 
• A paragraph or two for key experiences where you prove your skills 
• Conclusion 
• Professional closing

In Conclusion, 

To create a winning resume all you have to do is follow the advice in this article and remember the whole point of a resume—to show what you have to offer in a brief, clear, straightforward way. Meanwhile, if you're in between jobs and need some financial help, feel free to check out Check City's Personal Loans.