Background & Resume

Most recruitment companies will scan, or integrate your resume into their office system. It is therefore important that you make this process as simple as possible by ensuring that you use a standard font such as Times Roman, as this is easily scanned. Keep it simple and do not use underlines, italics, bold or fancy type fonts.

When writing your resume try to use nouns to describe your various skills. The reason for this is that recruiters will do keyword searches on their databases, for example, computer programmer, project manager and you need to ensure that your resume will pop up in a search. Conversely, when you are describing what you have actually done in previous jobs, use active verbs, such as, authored, designed, programmed.

You do not need to include references in your resume, unless they are specifically requested. It is better to say that these will be supplied at interview. As for personal information, it is not necessary to provide your marital status.

It is important with electronic resumes that they are as simple as possible. They should be in plain text, avoiding bolding, italics, graphics, tables and other complicated formatting.

You really need to put a lot of thought and work into writing your resume.

Your first draft is just the start. Keep working at it until you have what is a great advertisement for you. Ask friends and family to both, read and critique it. This is a really important document for you, so put in the effort so that you have a resume that will pay dividends in obtaining your ideal career position.

It is disheartening to know, that despite the amount of work that you put into preparing your resume it is most likely that whoever receives your resume is only likely to spend between one and three minutes reading it! So you must get your information across in a clear succinct manner. Keep them short!

When sending off a resume in reply to a position they should be accompanied by a covering letter.

NEXT PAGE Covering Letter

Plan to Succeed | Your Workplan | Background & Resume | Covering Letter |
The Interview | Interview Mistakes | Personal Pointers | After the interview