Does Your Resume Pass the Effective Resume Quiz?

Here’s a quick quiz to identify if your resume needs to be improved to produce results:

1. Is your resume a generic, one-size-fits-all document that focuses on your past?
2. Is your resume composed of job descriptions instead of achievement statements?
3. Have you used a resume format that highlights your weaknesses and downplays your strengths?
4. Are there any red flags (such as employment gaps, age discrimination, job hopping, or appearing overqualified) in your resume that would make an employer think twice about inviting you to an interview?

If you answered Yes to even one of these questions, your resume could be your problem.

A bad resume can negatively impact your job search, sometimes eliminating you from consideration for your perfect job. They are viewed by many, on both sides of the hiring process, as a necessary evil. For the job seeker, they are your opportunity to “make your case” for why you should be hired. Think of them as personal marketing or advertising, even “selling.”

A resume should summarize your achievements, skills, and education appropriate to the position you are seeking in the most positive way, but without being inaccurate or misleading. 

People often reject the idea that a resume is a “selling” document, but, if it is effective, that’s exactly what it does.  You are marketing your services to employers.  It’s your job to show the employer that you are the right person for the job, and your resume is the starting point for that show.

The Purpose of Your Resume

Basic truth about resumes: The purpose for your resume is to get you invited to interview for a job. 

People are very, VERY, *VERY* seldom hired based only on their resume.  

Your resume should open the door to a new job for you by:

1. Surviving the initial resume screening process (Do you meet the qualifications? Does your resume make a good impression? Does your resume contain the appropriate key words? etc.).
2. Keeping the hiring manager’s attention long enough to see that you are (or are not) qualified for the job opening.
3. Presenting the best picture of you (your skills, accomplishments, and education most relevant for the job you want).
4. Presenting that targeted picture of you in a way that entices the hiring manager to learn more about you.
5. Providing appropriate, accurate contact information so that the employer may reach you.

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post Is Your Resume Effective? appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Here’s what makes his resume so interesting: it needed to present Jared’s previous seven years when he lived in a spiritual community in India focusing on prayer and meditation.

It’s fair to say, Jared was making an extreme career change.

Sample Resume for an Extreme Career Change (a new window or tab will open for all sample resume links).

Read the Traditional Resume/Untraditional Career post to see how Jared made his next job transition.

About this sample resume:

Many people take several years off from their careers for various reasons. For example, some need to take care of aging parents, others become full-time parents.

In Jared’s case, he took a big hike to India to immerse himself in a spiritual practice. Upon his return, he had the challenge of explaining his spiritual hiatus on his resume so that it supported his search for a job in mainstream business.

The Peaceful Start to Jared’s Career

While going to college, Jared started meditating with a Yoga group on campus. In 1996 he graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in Social Work. A week after graduation, he packed his bags, bought a one-way ticket, and flew to India to pursue a life of meditation in a spiritual community (called an ashram).

For several years, his life on the ashram was fulfilling. In addition to hours of meditation each day, he volunteered to run the ashram’s food and shelter program for the homeless. He also helped manage the ashram’s office, which had very outdated equipment when he arrived, and which he helped upgrade somewhat. Through his volunteer service he developed excellent organizational skills that would serve him well later on.

Back to Business

At the seven-year point, he felt the urge to return to his friends and family in New York, which he did in the Spring of 2003. A few months after landing back home, he embarked on his job search. Realizing that re-entry to the American workforce would not be simple, he worked with a career counselor to make the big leap from volunteerism in rural India to employment in the U.S.

With the counselor’s help, Jared figured out his transferable skills, two of which were organization and communication. With some research he found job openings requiring these skills. Among them was an Office Assistant job at a small local business. He decided to go for it.

Functional Resume for an Untraditional Career Change

Jared used the functional format for his resume because his background in India was so unconventional and, for most American employers, hard to relate to. By using the functional format, he was able to emphasize his transferable skills without drawing attention to where he had developed those skills: working on family projects with his father, and his stint at the Indian ashram.

Things to note about this functional resume:

• How quickly the reader’s eye is taken to the two transferable skills: Organization and Communication. These two skill headings define his job objective (Office Assistant) and make the employer want to read the text under those headings.
• The achievement statements refer only to relevant activities. They do not touch on the many things Jared did (such as building furniture with his dad or meditating hours a day at the ashram) that do not directly support his job objective.
• For each bullet point statement, Jared gives a strong clue as to where the achievement took place. By easily referencing the Work History, the reader sees where and when things happened.
• Use of sub-bullet points tells us there is depth to the achievements. They also give a nice sense of organization (especially important for this job objective) and some variety to the resume layout.

Jared got that Office Assistant job in 2003, which gave him a foothold in the business world. Take a look at the chronological resume he wrote in 2016 to see how his career advanced to becoming a Marketing Communications Manager in the field of construction.

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post Sample Resume: Functional Resume for an Extreme Career Change appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Sample Resume for Laid-Off Job Seeker (a new window or tab will open for all sample resume links).

About this sample resume:

After graduating from college Kenneth got an entry-level customer service position at a hardware manufacturer. He liked the administrative side of his work and found that co-workers and his supervisor depended on his organizational and leadership talents, which encouraged him to start focusing on a career in management.

After a year on his first job, he won a position as Clerical Supervisor at a clerical outsourcing agency that served corporate clients. In four years, he was ready to move up the ladder a little more, so he applied for his most recent job as project team leader and administrative assistant at a real estate development firm.

Unfortunately, he just got laid off and is now looking for a new job.

Notice how the richness of his career path is clearly presented in this chronological resume format.

• His job titles very logically support his job objective of project manager with focus on administrative support.
• The diversity of his employers (manufacturing, outsourcing agency, and real estate development) tells a prospective employer this job candidate can handle just about any situation and picks up new industry knowledge easily.
• His leadership abilities create a trail of success stories (as demonstrated by his strong achievement statements in the Experience section) where ever he goes – something a prospective employer clearly wants.
• He’s proven to be a loyal and valued employee, having held his jobs for more than the average two-year span for most in this line of work.
• By placing the employment dates immediately after the city and state for each employer (instead of highlighting those dates with a lot of space around them), less attention is drawn to the fact that Kenneth is currently unemployed.

This resume was written in 20105. If Kenneth’s unemployment lasts beyond December 31, 2015, he would need to insert a relevant activity (such as a volunteer position, consulting, or professional training) at the top of his Experience section so there would be no apparent gap in his professional life.

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post Sample Resume: Laid-Off Project Manager with Focus on Administrative Support appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Unless they have no other options, they move on to the next candidate when they see these elements in your work history.

The best option is to manage the elements of your work history that would raise their concerns.

Your goal is to minimize or eliminate those elements that might move your resume to the discard file.

These strategies, below, make those red flags less obvious and less threatening.

The 4 Major Red Flags on Your Resume

Any one of the following red flags on a resume spells “risk” for an employer and could cause him or her to toss a resume:

1. Gaps in employment
2. Dates that trigger age discrimination
3. Job hopping
4. Appearing overqualified

The solutions to these problems vary, depending on the situation. Here are some suggestions for resolving your red flag.

  1. Gaps in Employment

All employment gaps must be filled so as not to make the prospective employer wonder if you had or have a serious problem such as substance abuse, incarceration, chronic illness, or just plain laziness.

If Laid Off: Make it clear why your were laid off. For example, if you were laid off as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, make the reason for the layoff clear. Add terminology like this in your description of the job:

Laid off as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic impact on business.

If many employees were laid off for the same reason, add the number if you know it. Like this (if 200 employees were laid off with you):

Laid off with 200 other employees as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic impact on business.

In the Work History section of your resume, explain any employment gaps by inserting a “job title” (full-time parent, volunteer, student, independent study, travel abroad) that is relevant to your job objective or, at least, says something positive about your character.

For example, aspiring receptionist Sophia Ricardo was unemployed for 15 years while she raised a family. In her Work History section, she listed the relevant volunteer positions she held during that time.

Read more tips and samples:

• How to handle employment gaps
• Traditional resume for a very untraditional career
• Mom returning to work with a career change

  2. Dates that May Trigger Age Discrimination  

Here’s a great way to understand how the dates on your resume create an impression of your age. It’s called the EPT formula (Experience Plus Twenty).

This is how EPT works:

• Subtract the earliest work history date on your resume from today’s date (years only, not months). So, if the earliest work history year on your resume is 1995, subtract that number from this year. Assuming that this year is 2020, the difference is 25 years.
• Add that number of years of work history to 20 (used as a ballpark figure for how old you probably were when you started working) to get a total of “x,” meaning that you are at least x years old. So, a resume read in 2020 with a work history that starts in 1995 tells the reader that the job seeker is at least 45 years old (25 years of experience + 20 = 45).

A well-crafted resume uses dates to lead the employer to deduce that you are within the ideal age range for the position you are seeking, regardless of your actual age.

For example, Lillian Smith is older than the “ideal” candidate the employer is hoping to hire for an administrative assistant position. Knowing that, she:

1. Did not put dates next to her degrees under Education and
2. She went back only 15 years in her Work History.

Using the Experience Plus Twenty formula, this information indicates that she is at least 35 years old, an age she believes the employer will deem appropriate.

Read more tips and sample resumes:

• How older job seekers can look younger on their resumes
• Older laid-off job seeker

  3. Job Hopping  

On average, workers change jobs once every two to three years. In many industries, employers find this rate of job change acceptable.

However, fewer than two years between jobs raises the question, “If I hire this person, will he leave me quickly for his next opportunity?”

If you have short terms of employment in your history, here are some ways to put a prospective employer’s mind at ease.

One or more of these suggestions might work for you:

• Use a functional format. This format takes the spotlight off your Work History section by placing it at the bottom of the resume, thereby shining the light on the skill headings in the body of the resume. This is not employer’s favorite resume format, so it may not be the best solution.
• Present similar short-term jobs under one job title, such as:
  Information Analyst assignments: XYZ Inc., ABC Corp., and JFK Co., 2002-2004

This technique works in both the chronological and functional formats.

• If you’re a new grad, include wording such as “concurrent with education” in the heading of your Employment section. This technique may be used in either a chronological or functional format.
• If you worked as a temp, state the employment agency as your employer.
• Call yourself a contractor, and create a list of selected companies where you worked. For example:

  Information Analyst, ABC Temp Agency, 2017 – 2019

  OR

  Information Analyst Contractor, 2017 – 2019
  Selected clients: DEF Corp., GHI Inc., and JKL Co.

  4. Overqualified  

If you’re worried that something on your resume might make you look overqualified for your job objective, consider placing that information in an inconspicuous place on your resume, or leave it off completely.

For instance, if you’re applying for an entry-level job as a pastry chef, you might not put your Ph.D. in Chemistry on your resume for fear that the employer would assume you want too much salary or would become bored in an entry-level position.

More about being more successful with your resume:

• To Change Industries, Make These 5 Tweaks to Your Resume
• Why a General Work-History Resume Doesn’t Work Now
• What Recruiters and Hiring Managers Want in a Resume

More About Beating Unemployment

• Job-Hunt’s Guide to Beating Unemployment
• Hiring Manager Tips for Escaping Unemployment
• 5 Options to Fill that Unemployment Gap by recruiter Jeff Lipschultz
• Overcoming the Unemployed Bias by recruiter Jeff Lipschultz
• Best LinkedIn Title When You Are Unemployed
• Managing Employment Gaps on Your Resume
  • Older, Laid-Off Worker – with sample resume
  • A Mom Returning to Work – with sample resume
  • Unemployed with a Chronic Illness – with sample resume
• Explaining Your Gap in Employment in Job Interviews

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post How to Manage the Red Flags on Your Resume appeared first on Job-Hunt.

Your master resume is your all-in-one document that encompasses the length and breadth of your career.

It highlights your qualifications for all the different types of work and all the skills you enjoy using and would like to use again. For some professionals, their master resumes show a lot of diversity, especially if they have changed careers one or more times.

To be clear, a “master” resume is different from a “target” resume:

• Your master resume is used for general purposes such as creating your LinkedIn profile and posting to large job boards.
• You create a target resume that includes only things that are relevant to the specific job you are aiming at, when you apply to a specific job opportunity, based on your master resume.

You need both, but they are different.

Tips for an Effective Master Resume

The best resume for your LinkedIn Profile is your master resume because it presents all your various professional skills and qualifications. That keyword-rich and varied content will act like a magnet to draw interesting career possibilities once it’s posted online (in your LinkedIn Profile) where recruiters and employers can find it.

So let’s go over the 10 tips for making an effective master resume for your LinkedIn profile.

1. Use a chronological resume format.

The LinkedIn Profile presents your information in the traditional chronological format. I suggest you use the same format for your master resume. And if you want, you could insert skill headings under one or more of your employment headings. This is helpful for emphasizing your skill sets and for organizing achievements if you have more than 10 under one employer.

2. Put a professional title under your resume heading.

In 120 characters and spaces (or less), state your professional title and your personal branding statement. (How to create your personal branding statement.)  In your LinkedIn profile, your professional title and branding statement will become your Headline.

3. Show the breadth of your career in your Summary section.

Tout your qualifications for all career areas and niches that you would consider for a career move. (This, of course, is unlike what you would do on a target resume, where you would narrow the focus to qualifications for just the specific job you are targeting with that resume.)

4. List all jobs that support the full range of your career possibilities.

In your Experience section, don’t be afraid to list jobs that show diverse skill sets and industry knowledge. More is better on your master resume/LinkedIn profile. The more varied your keywords are, the more diverse your job possibilities.

5. Write accomplishment statements, not job descriptions.

Show a thread of success running through your career by talking about results. And be sure they include keywords for any and all things you want to repeat.

6. Talk about all the things that support what you might want to do next.

Be sure to list degrees, certificates, projects, training, and skills (even if they’re not related to your current line of work) that represent what you enjoy and would consider doing on your next job.

7. Include keywords.

Keyword search is one way recruiters and employers will find you on LinkedIn. So be sure your master resume contains all the keywords for all the career possibilities you would entertain.

8. Prioritize!

Within each section, put your most impressive statement first. Second most impressive, second. And so on. Likewise, prioritize the sections on your master resume so the most important section is near the top.

9. Proofread.

Use your online spell checker and proofread carefully.

10. Copy and paste your master resume into the LinkedIn Profile builder.

Log into your LinkedIn account, go to the Edit Profile page, and use LinkedIn’s Profile builder. As you go through the builder section by section, you can copy and paste lines from your master resume into the appropriate fields. You may need to tweak things here and there to fit the format, but basically, your master resume will have everything you need for creating a great online profile.

Bottom Line on Master Resumes

Consider your master resume an active document on your hard drive. Keep it up to date as you complete projects, change jobs, and accumulate professional certifications and achievements. Each time you update your master resume, make the same update to your LinkedIn profile.

More Information About Master Resumes

• Convert Your Master Resume into a Great LinkedIn Profile

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post 10 Tips for a Great Master Resume for LinkedIn appeared first on Job-Hunt.

It serves as your online resume or CV on one of the most popular recruiting web sites on the Internet: LinkedIn.com.

Every day, recruiters and employers search LinkedIn profiles to find job candidates.

So creating a good profile is key to being found for your next career opportunity.

Like a traditional chronological resume, a LinkedIn profile has the following major sections:

• Summary
• Skills
• Experience
• Education

So it’s really quite easy to use your resume to create a LinkedIn profile. And LinkedIn has a good profile builder that you can use to copy and paste your resume, section-by-section.

Why Copy and Paste from Your Resume?

Why not type your information straight into the Profile Builder? Because you’ve already taken great care to create a well-thought-out and typo-free resume. You used Word’s spell check feature, and, hopefully, you asked someone to proofread each line of your resume.

By copying and pasting from your “perfect resume,” you avoid the risk of having mistakes in your LinkedIn Profile, and there will be no discrepancies between your master resume and your LinkedIn master resume (employers do compare the two!).

How to Convert Your Resume into a LinkedIn Profile

First, you need to create your master resume, the one you use as a foundation for making a target resume each time you apply for a particular job. Because your master resume presents a broad picture of who you are as a professional, and the value you offer to your professional community, its content will be excellent for your LinkedIn profile.

1. Click on Master Resume for Your LinkedIn Profile to learn how to create your master resume.
2. With your completed master resume document open, go to your LinkedIn account.
3. In the toolbar, hover your cursor over Profile, and click Edit Profile from the pull-down menu. The page displays your current profile.

Let’s go section-by-section to see how to use your master resume to create your LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn Headline

Make your title as specific as possible so it will serve as a concise personal branding statement (see Meg Guiseppi’s Creating Your Personal Brand article for tips) that sets you apart from other people on LinkedIn who share your name.

There’s a limit of 120 characters and spaces for your headline. Use keywords that are pertinent to your industry and that recruiters would use to search for someone with your skill set and/or job title.

1. Near the top of the page, click the Edit link next to your Name.
2. On the next page (Basic Information), enter your name as you want it to appear in your profile.
3. If you have a professional title on your resume, copy and paste that into the Headline field. If you don’t have a title on your resume, write one for your profile.
4. Fill in the fields for Location and Industry, and then click Save Changes.

Summary (About Section)

Consider copying and pasting the statements from your general resume into the Summary field. Use bullet points (or another symbol such as a dash or asterisk) to separate your statements. Avoid putting your info in big paragraphs, as big blocks of text are not inviting to read.

If bullet points don’t transfer when you copy and paste your statements, no problem. Find another LinkedIn that has bullet points in its profile (such as mine at https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanireland) and copy and paste them into your profile.

1. Go back to the Edit Profile page.
2. Click the Edit link next to the Summary heading. This takes you to a page where you can enter statements that summarize what you have to offer (and want to do for) your next employer.
3. Fill in the Specialties field and click Save Changes to go back to the Edit Profile page.

Experience

Again, use bullet points as you did in the Summary section.

1. Click the + Add a Position link next to the Experience heading.
2. On the next page, enter the information for your most recent job, including bullet point statements under each job title. For much of this you can copy and paste from your general resume.
3. When you’ve finished entering everything for your new position, click Save Changes to go back to the Edit Profile page.

Add more positions until you have your Experience section completed. Note that at any point you can click Edit next to one of your job titles and make changes to what you wrote for that job. You can also rearrange the order of your jobs (so they’re in reverse chronology) by using the drag-and-drop feature.

Education

Click + Add a School next to the Education heading, and copy and paste details about your education from your resume.

Other Sections

Now that you have the hang of how the LinkedIn profile builder works, you can add other sections if they’re relevant to your career. Here’s a list of additional sections you can create:

• Certifications
• Courses
• Honors and Awards
• Languages
• Organizations
• Projects
• Patents
• Publications
• Test Scores
• Volunteer Experience & Causes

Reordering Sections of the Profile

When you’re on the Edit Profile page, you can use the drag-and-drop feature to reorder the major sections of your resume. To figure out what order is best, use the same thinking you used when you prioritized the sections on your resume: Most relevant first.

The Bottom Line on Creating a Great LinkedIn Profile From Your Resume

If you already have a master chronological resume, you can easily use it to create a good LinkedIn profile by copying and pasting each section into the LinkedIn profile builder. Then, as you move through your career, remember to update both your master resume on your hard drive and your LinkedIn profile on the Internet. That way you’ll always be ready for the next professional opportunity that fits your career goals.

More Information About Master Resumes

• Create a Master Resume for Your LinkedIn Profile

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post How to Convert Your Resume into a Great LinkedIn Profile appeared first on Job-Hunt.

What difference does it make which format you use for your resume?

It’s all about timing.

With the right format, you can grab an employer’s interest during his or her initial eight-second scan of your resume.

During those few seconds when they scan the resume, the employer or recruiter wants to see:

1. Who the job seeker is.

2. What the job seeker wants.

3. Why the job seeker should get an interview.

If the employer can’t grasp that information in a quick scan, he or she is apt to set the resume aside or, even worse, discard it.

The right resume format (chronological, functional, or combination) organizes your information so that it passes an employer’s eight-second test.

So which resume format should you use?

The best format for you to use depends on what type of career transition you’re making, and one format is usually the most effective (see below).

Here are guidelines for when to use each format. (See resume samples here).

Chronological Resume Format

The most traditional format is the chronological resume.

This format highlights your dates, places of employment, and job titles, presenting them as headings under which your accomplishments are written.

The chronological format can be most effective when:

• You wish to remain in the same field or industry.
• Your work history shows lateral career moves, vertical career moves, or an increase in job responsibility, making your job objective the next obvious step in your career path.
• Your current or most recent position is one you are proud of and enjoy.

The Functional Resume Format

The functional resume presents your work experience under skill headings, which gives you the freedom to prioritize your achievements by their relevance and impact rather than by chronology.

The dates, names of employers, and job titles in your work history are listed concisely in a separate section, usually at the bottom of your resume.

This resume format is not highly regarded by most employers because it’s not easy to figure out what happened where in an applicant’s work history. For that reason, do not use it unless:

• You are making a very extreme career change, so extreme that your work history has almost no value to the potential employer (for example, rattle snake charmer to diplomatic ambassador).
• You are preparing to re-enter the job market after a long and hard-to-explain situation (such as incarceration or other circumstance that you want to de-emphasize).

Recruiters typically do not respond well to functional resumes.

The Combination Resume Format

This is the format most popular today. The combination resume format is a hybrid of the chronological and functional resumes.

Starting with the functional format, a small section at the top of the resume — often called the Summary of Qualifications — highlights the job seeker’s skills apppropriate to the job they are seeking.

The rest of the resume is in the standard chronological format. Skill headings are inserted under job title and employer headings to emphasize the relevant skills used on that particular job.

Employers like the combination format because it clearly displays the job seeker’s work history. Job seekers like this format because it highlights their skills.

The combination format is a great choice if:

• You’re making a career change and you need to underscore your transferable skills.
• Your job titles do not accurately describe the level of responsibility you held.
• You want to incorporate unpaid experience into your work history and you need to demonstrate the relevance and value of that experience.
• You want to draw attention to an earlier job, which you can do by inserting skill headings for the earlier job and not using skill headings for more current jobs.

The Bottom Line on Which Resume Format to Use

As usual, focus your resume on the employer — what do they want to know and how can you make that information very visible to them. Don’t make them work hard to determine you are a good fit for their open job.

More About Successful Resumes

• Why a General Purpose Resume Doesn’t Work
• Keyword Secrets to Get Your Resume Noticed
• How Top ATS Systems Analyze Resumes
• 3 Smart Tips to Beat the ATS Systems
• Your Most Important Keywords
• Understanding Keywords

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post How to Choose the Best Format for Your Resume appeared first on Job-Hunt.

So, before you even start writing your resume, you need to plan what kind of work you want to do next.

Then, create a resume that’s about your future by using the following technique:

Imagine that you are an artist with an empty canvas (a piece of paper or your computer screen) in front of you. Your assignment is to paint a picture of yourself at your next job.

And, what do you have to paint with? You have four tools:

1. Your experience (such as previous jobs, volunteer work, or school projects);
2. Your skill areas (such as management, computer, or sales);
3. Your concerns (such as the environment, homelessness, or human rights); and
4. Your personality (such as dependability, sense of humor, or ability to communicate).

In other words, combine any of these four areas to paint the picture of your future job.

The post How to Use Your Resume to Paint the Picture of Your Future appeared first on Job-Hunt.

But Jared’s career path wasn’t a straight line – it’s had some remarkable zigs and zags along the way. He just didn’t write about those zig-zags when he put together his resume. Sample Resume for “Untraditional” Job Seeker (a new window or tab will open for all sample resume links).

About this sample resume:

Jared grew up around hammers and nails. His dad was a craftsman who taught woodworking at the local community college. From an early age, Jared understood the basics of construction. When he was 16, he and his dad built a small summer house in Montana. The family assumed Jared would follow in his father’s footsteps in some line of the woodworking craft.

In college, Jared gravitated toward psychology, resulting in a Bachelor’s degree in social work. Then life took an unexpected turn: Jared joined a meditation organization and moved to India to follow his spiritual calling. His spiritual practice was austere and completely unrelated to the business world.

Seven years later, he returned to the United States and found work, first as an office assistant in a small local business and then as a training specialist at Yarrow &White Construction. And that’s where the professional experience on his resume starts.

That’s right, there’s no mention of his 7 years in India or his first job when he returned to the U.S.

In 2005, Jared got his MBA in Marketing while working as a training specialist. Then, he took a step up in his new career and became Marketing Team Leader at another construction company. Four years later he got hired by a larger construction firm as Marketing Communications Director.

Jared is happy to be living his dream career – one that combines his love of building and marketing. So he’s now looking for another Marketing position in construction.

A Traditional Resume

Now let’s look at what’s especially interesting about this traditional chronological resume:

• Despite Jared’s rather round-about career path, it looks perfectly straight on his resume. His chronological resume contains no red flags – no cause for an awkward question about his past when he sits down for a job interview.
• His achievements are strong and relevant, with measurable results that hint at his ability to rise to meet a challenge and succeed despite the odds.
• His resume real estate within the Professional Experience section is wisely divided up. His current job takes up the most space; his second-most-recent job takes up less space; and his earliest job takes up the least amount of space. Visually this indicates career growth.
• Education is placed at the bottom of the page. You might think with such a relevant MBA that it would go at the top. But Jared placed it at the end because the date of his degree is so many years ago. Note: he didn’t list his BA in Psychology because the date for the degree goes too far back, and it’s not necessary as the employer will know he must have gotten a bachelor’s degree to qualify for a master’s degree.

The Bottom Line

This chronological resume for a Marketing Manager is so lean and mean it fits on one page. This is largely possible because he started his Professional Experience section with only his recent relevant jobs. He left several earlier experiences off his resume all together without ever referring to them. Now that’s smart marketing!

About the author…

Susan Ireland is the author of four job search books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume. For more information about writing your resume check out The Damn Good Resume website which Susan manages.
More about this author…

The post Sample Resume: Traditional Resume for a Very Untraditional Career Path appeared first on Job-Hunt.