Get The Job You Want: Resume Design and Formatting

Looking for a job can be one of the most stressful yet exhilarating experiences, and one that you probably will repeat more than once or twice in your lifetime. The days when a person would start with a company, stay for their entire working career, and then retire with their pension at age sixty-five. Statistics indicate that the average person will change jobs as many as six times over their working career. Particularly in tougher economic time, the work force is even more fluid.

Given this, a job-seeker needs to find a way to stand out among all the other, perhaps equally-qualified, job-seekers. To stand out from the crowd, a job-seeker needs to find a way to present themselves so that they will grab the attention of a potential employer. A well-written, and well-formatted resume can be that attention getter.

Most employers will spend an average of seven seconds reading, or scanning the stack of resumes they receive for every single job they advertise. This doesn't leave much time for them to see what a job-seeker may have to offer.

Very often, good people are passed over because their information is either too hard to see, or their resume looks just like every other resume that has crossed their desk that day. This is one of the very few places in your job search where appearance is almost as important as substance. It will not substitute for substance, but it will attract attention to get the substance looked at, instead of overlooked.

To make things worse, the applicants all may have used the same bland, phrases and buzz words to set out their experience and qualifications. Aside from doing everything you can to make sure the contents of your resume is the best you can make it, you also need to spend some time ensuring that it is formatted in such a way as to stand out from the rest.

That seven seconds is your window of opportunity - your best chance to engage their interest. That's why it is so important that your resume is well-formatted, and that it clearly highlights the best you have to offer.

Your resume is the first chance your potential employer has to find out about you - your first contact. Even though you may have included a cover letter with your resume, your employer may rarely even read that. Their limited time is generally devoted to ferreting out qualified people to fill their job vacancies, so they tend to concentrate on the resumes - what they perceive as the hard information .

The single, most common mistake made by resume writers is their choice of resume templates. Word processing programs offer many, easy-to-use tools that will create your resume. Unfortunately, these resumes may be new to the user, but, by the time a potential employer has waded through several hundred of them, your resume will appear generic and uninviting.

As well, many of these programs use proprietary coding for their fonts and graphic elements. They do not translate well when viewed or printed from email, or opened in a different word processing program.

It is much better to use as little formatting as possible, and to rely on a clean simple format. Attractive yet simple formatting throws the emphasis on the information rather than on all the "bells and whistles" included in a template.

This is not to say that you will not find an absolutely perfect template for you resume, but you still need to make it your own, and get around the proprietary code that is often embedded in it.

To get around this problem, first identify what about the template makes it appealing. Then start with a blank page to replicate the style as closely as possible without adding the additional code.

The second most common mistake, and one made by a surprising number of job-seekers, is the inclusion of graphics in the resume. It is a common practice nowadays on many social networking sites for users to post a graphic representation, or an actual picture. It is not an acceptable practice to do so on a resume.

A resume are a formal presentation - a business "pitch", if you will, from you to a potential employer. It is the best representation of the skills and qualifications you possess, that make you perfect for the job opening they have.

Including graphics in a formal resume, even if you are applying for a position as a graphic designer, can send a signal to a potential employer that you do not take yourself seriously.

Here are some basic formatting tips that will help your resume make the best impression possible:

• Unless applying for certain professional situation where a longer resume is expected, keep your resume to two pages - three at the most for more applicants with many years of experience
• The page should have 1" margins, top bottom, right and left. Maintaining even margins lends a clean look to your resume
• Use left justification only - avoid centering any of the contents. Though often used on websites, centering is a very informal style of text presentation, and really does not belong on a resume
• The font and size should remain consistent - not identical, but consistent. Formatting techniques should be applied consistently, and sparingly, throughout your resume
• Bullet points should be basic circles or squares. These translate best to other programs and when sent as an email attachment
• Avoid ALL-CAPS for headings or headlines. Titles of the main sections should be a slightly larger font, and in bold-face font
• Avoid underlining any of the information in your resume - in this day of Internet-driven job applications, underlines indicate web links
• Generally speaking, the font of your headlines, or section headers, should not exceed 14 point - the rest of the resume should not exceed eleven point - twelve at the most. Too large a font can make your resume look child-like, or create the appearance that you have little to offer - that you used a large font to make less appear as more.
• Set tab stops when formatting your resume, rather than the space bar, or repeatedly pressing the tab key. If your resume is viewed on a computer, such formatting could be displayed, and will appear quite amateurish. Get help with this task, if you need to - appearances do count in your resume.

Once you have written and formatted your resume, as a final check, ask your friends and family to read it over and give you feedback. When you ask for help, be specific. Ask them to look for anything out of place. Ask if your resume is easy to read and understand. Ask also if the text appears cramped or cluttered, or if the content looks uncrowded and clean-looking on the page.

Email it to several of your friends so they can see how your formatting "translates" in a different program. Ask one of them to print it out so you can make sure that everything remains consistent. Once you have achieved a sleek, simple appearance, you are well on your way to presenting a product that will grab the attention of any potential employer, and land that all important first interview.

© 2010, Text by Imelleda, All rights reserved