Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Resume Writing Tips

Your resume writing should be succinct, clear and easy to read. No resume writing that is overly flowery, with hyperbole and superlatives that exaggerate your qualifications. Your resume writing should include lots of organization - bullets, lists and italics that make important points stand out, and plenty of white space.

Make sure that when you do your resume writing you catch all the grammatical and punctuation errors and all the typographical mistakes as well. There is nothing that will get your resume thrown on the junk pile faster than a grammar mistake or a misspelled word. No matter what experience you list or what qualifications you clarify you probably won't get the interview if your resume writing indicates you are sloppy or a poor communicator.

Your resume writing should be focused and powerful. If you don't want to state an objective (which, by the way, if stated, should be very specific) you should at least clarify a job title or industry somewhere up front. Your name and contact information should be immediately followed by "clinical professional," centered on a line by itself, for example.

While your resume writing should certainly be honest and factual you also want to stand out and put your best job search foot forward with the use of powerful words. Starting each sentence with a powerful word is one good way of making yourself unique. Some powerful words are "accomplished," "launched," "managed," "tackled," and "coordinated." See the powerful action in these? This type of resume writing makes you look proactive, strong, focused and determined.

Writing Your Qualifications

Resume writing is first and foremost about stating your qualifications and experience, of course. Here are some tips on writing this section of your resume.

You should always list the positions you held in reverse chronological order. In other words, list the most recent job first and the job you held first is last on the list when you do your resume writing. Those jobs that you held years ago and probably were more entry level than your later positions don't need much detail.

Where your resume writing should be more detailed is in the explanation of your most recent jobs and the ones whose responsibilities and achievements have the most relevance to the position for which you are now applying. Make sure the information you provide is detailed and quantifiable, not long, confusing or boring.

There is no hard and fast rule, when resume writing, about whether to begin each job with the job title or the name of the firm. Just decide on which will most impress the potential employer, and then start with that - and make it bold. Once decided, however, your resume writing must be consistent.

You should never start one job with the job title and your next position with the name of the firm. If the firm is not well known, it’s wise to parenthetically explain what the company does and is. Your dates of work should come last, and be italicized. There is never any reason, if you were employed more than a year, to include the months. All you need to state are the years of employment.

It is perfectly acceptable, when resume writing - and, in fact, is encouraged - to include volunteer work that is relevant.

If you're writing a resume for a Life Sciences position here are a few resume tips.

1) Technical Skills Come First
The first resume tip is to put your technical skills, training, education and knowledge at the top of your resume. Make sure it is detailed and organized and that your technical expertise is clear. Keep in mind that prior to finding its way to the prospective employer the resume is going to be read by a gatekeeper, and will likely be perused for important keywords. The best resume tip to get your resume in front of the employer is to make sure you include relevant keywords, such as industry or job jargon, an all operating systems and programs with which you are proficient.

2) Quantify Your Past Results
Be factual with your experience, quantifying it where you can. You could, for instance, highlight the regulatory submissions you’ve filed, the types of clinical trials you’ve managed, the products you’ve marketed, or the types of therapeutic areas you’ve researched. What was the quantifiable impact your actions had on the company? Did your actions help move a drug through a phase quicker, launch a drug or device sooner, thus saving money or making additional profits for your company? If so, state it unequivocally on your resume

3) Use Action Words
Be active rather than passive in your resume. Begin each sentence with an action, keeping it in the past tense. For example, which description do you think is better?:
I was a call Quality Engineer
Implemented effective quality systems resulting in ISO 13485 compliance
It is important to clearly describe the value you provided to the employer in the past tense and starting with an action word.

4) Give Yourself Credit
Blow your own horn. This is not the time to be shy. Treat your resume as a marketing and sales tool for yourself. Write it as if you are the product and the employer the consumer. Sell yourself. If you have a significant accomplishment that doesn't seem relevant to the job list it separately, but do list it.

5) Be As Short As Possible While Still Being Totally Clear
Keep your resume as concise as practical, without minimize the point size to make it hard to read, or eliminating needed white space. If your resume includes fewer than six years of experience you should be able to keep it to one page. Unless you are applying for a senior executive position, however, you shouldn't exceed three pages. Some of the ways to be concise is to leave out the details of projects of which you were not the key part. Articles and pronouns can be eliminated - you don't need a, an or the - and you definitely don't need I.

6) Don't Give Any More Information Than The Reader Needs
Eliminate all unimportant, or non-pertinent information, as well as those things that will give away your right to be considered without bias. You should never, for example, include your resume, your marital status, any indication of your health or age, or any associations that would make clear your religious, sexual preference or political affiliation. You don't need to tell a prospective employer, for example, that references are available, nor do you need to name supervisors at this point.

7) No Silly Mistakes
The final resume tip is to check for errors. Check yourself for grammatical and punctuation errors as well as typographical mistakes. Have someone else proofread your resume whose opinion and ability to catch errors you are confident about. This is probably the most important resume tip of all.

3 comments:

Bose said...

Superb tips!
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Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing valuable tips for resume writing. This all information are very useful for me because In short time I want to start online resume writing business. So I really thankful to you.
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Unknown said...

I would say that whether it's payroll officer resume or for any other person it's simply a document that contains a summary of job experience and education. A resume is the first thing a employer encounters when seeking potential candidates for a certain job classification.