A ship-shape resume

Recruiters and employers receive dozens of resumes each week, so it’s important that your resume is easy to read and highlights the key information that sells your skills and experience.

A good resume is succinct and informative and provides the reader with a clear understanding of your experience and achievements. There is some specific information that all resumes should include and other information that is optional, depending on the type of role you are seeking to attract.

Key information and headings are:

  • Name and contact details
  • Education
  • Professional experience/employment history
  • References

Optional information and headings are:

  • Career objective
  • Personal profile
  • Professional training
  • Professional affiliations and memberships
  • Foreign languages
  • Achievements and awards or Publications
  • Interests

It is unreasonable to expect that your resume will be suitable for all roles and all companies so you will need to tailor your resume to the specific requirements of the role for which you are applying. This may only require small tweaking – after all, the general information remains the same. However, the skill sets and experiences you highlight can be tailored to the particular role and help the reader immediately identify your potential suitability.

Presentation

Resumes should be simple and basic in their presentation. It is the content that will attract the reader, not fancy fonts or embedded images. As most resumes are received electronically these days, they should be saved in a Word format or PDF format.

Personal details

Information other than your name, postal address, telephone contact and email contact details is generally not necessary, unless specifically requested (e.g. Nationality or resident status – some companies’ only employ Australian residents).

You should be easily contactable on the phone numbers and email address provided, although we understand if you are not immediately available during standard business hours.

Education

More information should be included about your most recent education and qualifications and less about earlier studies. It is appropriate to include any scholarships or academic awards in this section.

You should include studies you are currently undertaking (i.e. those not completed) and their expected completion date, especially where they are relevant to the type of roles you’re seeking to attract.

You would generally only include studies after graduation from secondary school in this section, although if you are a university graduate, it may be appropriate to include details of the subjects undertaken and your marks, if relevant, given certain companies will only consider applicants who achieve a particular level.

Professional experience/employment history

Like the section on Education, resumes should focus more on your recent employment than past roles. It is appropriate to only list jobs for the past, say, ten years if you have been working for some time although it may cause readers of your resume to question what you were doing before then. Alternatively, just list the position, company and relevant dates (including months) of your employment for earlier roles and focus more on the last five to seven years.

If you are applying for a role for which earlier experience is more relevant, it is appropriate to include more detail about that role in your resume, however, it should ideally have occurred within the last five to seven years, otherwise, it may highlight the fact your experience is not recent.

Where possible, you should account for any unexplained gaps in your employment or positions that you have held, otherwise, it leaves the reader open to drawing his/her own conclusions about the situation. Your account should only be a line.

In detailing your employment history, you can put the company or the position first, depending on which is more relevant in terms of the roles you are seeking to attract. Whatever you decide, the format should be the same throughout.

Information about the job should focus on your achievements, rather than simply listing your duties and responsibilities. This helps the reader understand what value you contributed to the company, for example:

“Oversaw the most successful launch of X product in the company’s history, generating $Y of business in under two years”.

References

You can either choose to list the names, current position and capacity in which you worked with this person (for example, former manager), plus their contact details (telephone and email) in this section, or it is perfectly acceptable to indicate your referees are available upon request.

Your referees should be aware that you have nominated them as a reference on your resume. It may be worthwhile alerting them when you are advanced in a recruitment process (they may be able to offer some helpful advice – or even put a good word in for you informally). If you progress to the reference stage, you should let your referees know to expect to be contacted, both as a courtesy to them, but also to ensure they understand the role for which you have presented and can sell you to the employer in the best light.

Optional information

You may choose to include a cover sheet if you think it will help sell your skills and experience to the employer and provide relevant context, however, they are generally not required today. If you do choose to include one, keep it as succinct as possible.

Similarly, a career objective or personal profile should only be included if it helps focus the reader’s attention on what skill set and experience you can offer, and how those attributes are relevant to the role. That said, this information can be helpful when reviewing large numbers of resumes so it’s important to include key words (i.e. skills, experience, attributes etc) that an employer is likely to be looking for.

To keep your resume as brief and informative as possible, the other ‘optional extras’ listed above should only be included if you feel they will support your resume, or are specifically requested. For example, if the role has specific compliance or membership requirements - or if the employer tends to favour people who demonstrate a work-life balance – or if a skill set is demonstrated through an extracurricular activity rather than on-the-job (like leadership and mentoring) – or if the employer is seeking someone who is multilingual.

Other tips

  • Number each page, except the first
  • Ensure the content is laid out with plenty of space so it’s easy to read (and not squashed to fit on one page)
  • Thoroughly review the content to ensure the spelling and grammar is correct (and hasn’t been overlooked by the spell-check)
  • Don’t include a photo

The example below should give you some idea of how a modern resume should look, although resumes are not a one-size-fits-all document and as emphasized above, should be tailored to the roles you are seeking to attract.

Click here to download a sample resume