When I first graduated college, I thought my resume was fire. Is that the correct lingo millennials are using these days? Anyway, I thought it was great and that it didn’t need anything else. It had everything fit onto one page, it had the last 5 jobs and all the amazing responsibilities that it carried, the font wasn’t too bold or threatening, and it had all my contact information. What could go wrong?
EVERYTHING.
My resume wasn’t enough to get me hired for any kind of career that I was ready to dive into. After speaking to some professional friends and having them look at my resume, I realized that my resume was pure crap and it wasn’t going to help me stand out to employers that were looking for new hires.
These are what a decent resume should contain:
Your name, address, phone number, e-mail address. Please make sure that your e-mail address is appropriate and doesn’t sound weird at all. Just to be safe, use your first and last name and if that’s taken, add your birthday or lucky number.
The last 3 jobs that are related to the field that you want to go into. If you didn’t work in college because you had laser focus on getting that degree, just put all your work experience on your resume. We don’t want your prospective employer to think you have no life experience.
For the fine details for the job experiences, DO NOT just list off all the tasks that you were responsible for completing like I did. Instead, you just need to list 3 things: 2 amazing things you were able to accomplish (think sales goals and quotas), and 1 thing that you did that helped the business grow. For example, I worked in a restaurant as an assistant manager so my 3 bullet points were:
- Managed a team of 15-20 employees at a food establishment that grosses 2.5 million dollars a year
- Resolved customer issues through responding to customer needs, responding to negative Yelp reviews, and training employees to prevent future instances
- Successfully developed menu changes that resulted in 20% increase in sales
With these 3 tips, your resume will evolve into the beautiful butterfly that it’s just waiting to be. Of course, there is no official way to write a resume and you just need to find the best method that works for you. If you have any amazing tips that I didn’t list, please leave comment below!