When It Comes to Your Career, Dont Take Chances.

Formatting A Resume, Part II

When It Comes to Your Career, Dont Take Chances. Learn to Do Things the No Mistakes Way

Original Resume of Jane DoeThis is a resume that I received not too long ago. I changed the wording to Latin and removed recognizable names, like companies etc. but the format is almost identical to what I received. In case youre wondering, yes, I was tempted to toss this in the trash.

The sad part is that the resume wasnt that badcontent wise.

What Im going to do here is show you what this resume looks like with a little attention paid to it and the proper formatting.

Formatting Step OneThe first thing well do is increase the font from 11 point to 12 point.

Next well fix the personal section. Were going to center the text and increase the font on the name to 14 point and make it bold, and decrease the font on the rest to 10 point.

Next well get rid of the objective and summary. I know that many people like those sections, but trust me, theyre not needed. Read my book and youll see why.

Now well attack the Work History which this person has labeled Experience. First well increase the title to 14 point. Then well fix the rest.

For each company, you should have the name of the company, location, and date on one line, with the date aligned to the far right. All of it should be bold. Well do that for each company first and get it over with.

Then well change all of the company description text to 10 point, and keep it in italics.

Now well make sure line spacing is set at single line. This person had it set at .9.

Already you can see a big difference, but were only getting started.

Formatting Step TwoFirst, well put all job titles in bold. The director of sales wasnt.

Then well make sure that the text isnt crammed together. Lets separate the responsibilities and accomplishments and display them in a bullet list.

I think you can see the difference that makes. Readability factor just went up by magnitudes.

Formatting Step ThreeFrom here on out its tweaking, but very important tweaking.

Well start with aligning the dates (strictly for aesthetics). You can see how to do this here.

Formatting Step FourFor the final tweak, were going to adjust white space to give the resume better readability. This is done not by hitting return and inserting lines but by using the line spacing menu. It gives you all the options you need.

Ill be doing a video on how to do that in the next few weeks.

Now Compare the Two

The one on the right is a resume I would actually read.

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