Overall, I am drained by the amount of resume help I have been getting recently. Not just these readings, but from other classes and workshops that I've attended. I really think that resumes will not please everyone, but that the resume should be designed and written to please the maximum number of reviewers as possible. Although I have had a lot of help already, these readings shined light on new areas that I have left in the dark until now.
When reading Instructor Blog #2, I noticed some important concepts to follow that I applied to my resume. My experience section now has three jobs and two bullets for each. Before, my resume did not have two bullet points for each job. I now see that only one bullet point makes the job look vague and boring. The Instructor Blog #2 also had a link to Purdue's OWL for good active verbs. This proved insightful and helped my vocabulary tremendously.
The article by the HR coordinator was nice because someone who scans resumes constantly gave insight on how they look over and pick out winning resumes. Everyone is different, of course, but this gives an excellent guideline to follow. The article helped with two things for my resume. First, It showed that my objective statement was too vague and wasn't specific enough. Secondly, the HR coordinator said that the design, flow, and wordiness of the resume is something that is usually overlooked by the writer, but actually helps in giving the reviewer some visual pleasure. I took this into account and slimmed down my resume, and only keeping main points. This will help so the reviewer's eyes will naturally scan my resume while their eyes get drawn to the next point.
Overall, I think my resume is ready for my job search, and these readings helped in upgrading it. Although I have learned a lot about writing resumes, there will always be new techniques to use as the world's views on resumes change. It is up to me to keep up with these standards and change my resume accordingly.
Design, Flow, and Wordiness
While building my own resume I had trouble with accomplishing “design, flow and wordiness.” I spent countless hours developing what I want on my resume. How do I make it clear and well designed? I find that I have trouble writing sub par descriptions for detailed experiences. While using a thesaurus can help deliver ideas more clear. Resume flow is hard to develop, allowing the usage of wording to help the transitions though out resume parts. Everyone use’s a template for their design making it difficult to make a resume different than others. This is where using different fonts and alignments can change the appearance, but still the reviewer can read and locate the information they are looking for. Building a well designed resume with good flow and wordiness takes time and possible many tries with many different critics.
Zebulon Rouse
Annoyed HR coordinator
I agree with you about being drained by the amount of help out there for resume writing. It all seems to say contradicting things which supports your argument that no resume will please everyone. I think using the tips and guidelines online to write your first draft is great however, using a friend that can give you constructive criticism about it should be the next step you take. I also took a lot from the article written by the HR coordinator. However, I found it slightly annoying that he was complaining about having to read all of these resumes when that is pretty much his job function.
Drafting a perfect resume is
Drafting a perfect resume is an ongoing process. Everyone seems to have their own opinion of what to include and what not to include. Some advise can be useful and a lot can be overwhelming. When another person reviews your resume and begins to give you tips and advice you need to make sure that the changes will show a better reflection of you, and not just the view of their idea of a good resume. I found the articles that I reviewed to be very helpful in that they gave me a general outline to follow when drafting a resume, but I also feel that with different and unique job types, such as a pilot, some of the standard resume guidelines may not always apply.