♪ [music] ♪ Let's talk about resumes. Big Interview is primarily about acing the interview, but we also know how important resumes are in making sure you get the right opportunities to show off those new and improved interview skills. If you're not getting enough calls for interviews, it may be time to revisit your resume. As you probably know, your resume is the key marketing document in your job search. There's a lot of information out there about resumes, articles, templates, resume builders. Some of the advice is good while much of it is very general, misguided or even outdated. We wanted to help you focus on the most useful tips and guidelines to help you make sure your resume does its job, getting you in the door for the interviews you want. With this lesson, we're going to start by providing an overview of how to format and structure your resume for maximum effect. You can use this information to write or rewrite your own resume or to guide you in seeking expert help if you want it. Other lessons will focus on using keywords and persuasive writing techniques to get results, writing a summary statement to make any resume more compelling and other topics like writing cover letters and thank you notes. For right now, let's start here with the resume big picture, how to format and structure your resume. ♪ [music] ♪ First, let's address length. You've probably read that all resumes should be limited to one page. Well, experts now agree that the one-page rule is dead. It's perfectly okay to go to two pages if you have the content to justify it. However, your resume should always be as focused and concise as possible. Too much fluff will turn off recruiters and hiring managers, and also serve to bury your most interesting content. If you're a student or relatively new grad, your resume should probably stick to one page. If you have more experience, two pages is just fine. There's rarely a need to go to more than two pages for a resume. It's a difference to when we're talking about a CV or a curriculum vitae, commonly used in Europe and in the U.S. and Canada, in academia, medicine, and some other fields. A CV is expected to be longer. For a standard American resume, try to stick to two pages. Of course, it's important to make sure your best information is highlighted at the top of the first page to make sure it's seen during the usual 20-second scan. We'll get to more advice on how to do that shortly. ♪ [music] ♪ For those who are totally new to writing resumes, it's important to talk a bit about the traditional resume voice used in resume writing as it's different from other forms of writing. Instead of always writing in full sentences, it is traditional to drop the "I". So, instead of "I lead my team to a 20% increase in sales revenue," you would simply say, "Lead team to 20% increase in sales revenue." Why? Who knows? It probably started as a matter of efficiency. Most of your resume sentences should be about you, so why keep repeating "I" and "My" when it should be obvious. At this point, it has become the standard, so using "I" and "me" and "my" can make you look amateurish or unpolished, while also unnecessarily taking up valuable space on the resume. Leave the "I" for the cover letter and thank you notes. Even without the "I"s, your resume writing style should favor active voice versus passive voice. As a refresher for those who have blocked out high school English comp class, active voice sentences focus on a subject taking action versus an object being acted upon. For example, active is, "I wrote the presentation," passive is, "The presentation was written by me." As you can see, passive voice tends to be more wordy and indirect. For a resume, that's no good. Also, active voice tends to emphasize action as you would assume from the name. In a resume, you want to take ownership of your actions and accomplishments. Present yourself as active and not passive. This is why it's so useful to use lots of descriptive action words in your resume. We'll talk more about that and share a list of resume action words in our persuasive resume writing lesson. So, in the resume drop the "I" but keep the sentences in active voice as much as possible. Passive voice is not wrong however, it may be useful in some scenarios when talking about actions taken by others where the details aren't important. But, it is always best to use powerful language whenever you can. ♪ [music] ♪ When it comes to layout and design, there's no one perfect format. There are a lot of free and low-cost templates out there, and most of them work just fine. Unless you're in a design-related field, the fonts and visuals will be secondary to the content. Layout is all about looking professional and drawing attention to the key information. If you are in a design related field, your resume also serves as a sample of your design skills and sensibilities, so you'll want to use your talents to show what you can do. For the rest of us, the focus should be on professionalism and efficiency. Professionalism means using a modern, easy-to-read font like Calibri or Garamond or Arial. Avoid using fonts that look dated or hard to read like Courier or Brush Script or the dreaded Comic Sans. Don't over think it. Your resume font is not going to be a deciding positive factor, "I love his font, get him on the phone now." On the other hand, a really bad font choice could hurt you by making you look out of touch or unprofessional or sloppy. Font size is all about readability. Stick to 10 to 12.5. You can go a little bigger for section or position headings to distinguish them Though you can also use bold or italic for this purpose, just be consistent. Make your name stand out with a larger font size and formatting though there's no need to go crazy here. Other visual elements should be selected based on similar goals creating a professional, polished and easy-to-read document. This includes choosing where to center versus left justify, or to use bold, italic, or bullet points, or to use a line or other design element or extra white space to visually separate sections. Again, be consistent. Be careful about going overboard to squeeze more information into the space. If you go too small with your font or squeeze your line spacing too tight, readability will suffer. As we mentioned earlier, it's okay to go to two pages if you have good content to justify it. If you're junior-level and this close to fitting on one page, it's a better idea to go back and get ruthless about eliminating extra words or unnecessary details. Check out our other lesson on persuasive resume writing for techniques to keep your content concise and convincing. ♪ [music] ♪
