As you revise your resumes, Jeremy and I want to draw your attention to a few things. As we mentioned in several comments to this week's reading responses (which focused primarily on the "contradictory" advice found in the world of resumes, the fickle nature of HR, and the impossibility of creating the perfect resume - here and here), the success of a given resume is tightly bound to its particular situation. There is no "perfect" resume because there is no singular situation: what works in one setting may not work in another. As Jeremy and I argued, this does not mean that "anything goes" or that it does not matter what you do with your resume. It means you have to do the work of knowing the situation your resume will enter and then do your level best to make it fit. It also means that for each job you apply for you will want to consider creating a modified resume.
This brings us to why design is so important in a resume. While human perception is far from universal, there are several cognitive/cultural constants (particularly with the predominantly Western audiences you will face) upon which the design principles guiding the creation of resumes are based. Western audiences typically read from left to right and from top to bottom. This suggests that the most prominent part of a written document is the top left corner, which happens to be where we put our names. Furthermore, skimming down the left side of the page typically reveals the most important information. This is why hierarchical lists are indented: the farther right you move the less important the information is (or is signaled to be). Additionally, we tend to see information divided into units if it is grouped together visually. This is why you want each entry in your resume to be a distinct visual unit. Jeremy and I have attached a handout entitled "Evaluating Your Resume's Design" (pdf) that will help you review and revise your resumes with respect to these design "constants." It provides exercises that will allow you to adjust your resume's alignment, balance and grouping.
The importance of design in your resumes is confirmed by our Resume Extravaganza. Of the 34 resumes attached, 5 resumes clearly stood out in the rankings:
- Hines - 20 votes
- Davies - 18 votes
- Stefanov - 14 votes
- Rouse - 13 votes
- Sheridan - 12 votes
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Here is the general breakdown for the rest of the resumes. What we see here is a distinction between the top five or so and the rest. Such results are fairly typical for this exercise.
- two resumes earned 9 votes
- three earned 6 votes
- two earned 5 votes
- two earned 4 votes
- three earned 3 votes
- three earned 2 votes
- seven earned 1 vote
- six did not earn any votes
Many students, in articulating their rankings, cited design as the primary reason for picking a resume. In fact, several students indicated they were surprised by just how much designed factored in. Chris nicely articulated the importance of design when he commented: "I liked the overall design of these resumes. I felt that they were easy to view and made good use of the page. I liked how they each had a type of style that made them stand out in a way that you remembered as you viewed all of the resumes at once. They each had a pretty good column feel to them that balanced them out." As Chris's language indicates, design is as much about emotion as it is information. The design creates are particular interaction between the reader and the information. A cluttered page creates a tense (or even adversarial) relationship with the reader. A flat or blank design creates an apathetic relationship. The design of the resume should give the reader a way of reading the information and way to feel about the person behind it. This gets at what Richardson means when he remarks, "It isn't my job to make sense out of your life." The resume, with both its design and is content, should make sense out of your experiences, and the sense it makes should be closely aligned with what the employer wants.
The questions you must ask yourself, then, as you revise your resumes should focus on the kind of impression you want to create and the kind of impression your audience will appreciate. This is what Jeremy and I ask ourselves as we evaluate and comment upon your resumes: what story is this document telling, what impressions does it create, and can we tell from the resume itself what job you want and what company you want to employ you?
Exercise: attach a brief 100 word comment indicating how you plan on revising your resume with respect to the design tests identified in the "Evaluating Your Resume's Design" handout (column, quadrant, squint, distance). Be specific and concrete. Do not just say "I will revise my resume so that it is balanced." Describe precisely what you will move or change in your resume.
N/A
I will probably bring more attention to the five to ten important words that are the lead-in to a description that would likely get skimmed over. Things like the title of an important job I had or my GPA. I think my resume is pretty well balanced from top to bottom but it does need to be a little more condensed near the end. I will change up my activities section to do this. That's all I can come up with right now so the purpose of this sentence is to meet the 100 word minimum as I will not have time to change it since I have work the next three days.
Shane
Resume Revision Plans
I am considering moving my education information above the skills section on my resume. I've had this format on my resume for so long that I'm not sure anymore why it's in this order, and I think my education is a strong point. I am also thinking about dividing my skills into two columns to help balance the space on the page, although I like that the double column on the bottom of my current draft leaves the weight on my work experience. I may or may not make this change; I might have to decide after I see it.
I'm also considering taking off the date on my education portion. I noticed on the resume extravaganza comments that someone inferred that I was graduating from Purdue in 2.5 years, which isn't entirely truthful. While I am graduating early and I have only been here for 2.5 years, I did my freshman year at another school and have not listed it for a while because it creates confusion. I'm not sure how important the date actually is, so I will probably remove it.
Kristin
revisions
After some good, constructive feedback there are a few things I will change on my resume. First, I will revamp some of the typography under my “work experience” section. I used bold text to highlight my employers and italics to highlight my job titles. I thought It was more important to highlight my employer rather than my job title. But as TANoNati pointed out, the job title is more important and should be highlighted to catch the readers eye. I’m also working on different parallel verbs for my current job. They are not as strong as those under my past experience and don’t do the best job of grabbing attention. Lastly, there are a few errors, like an extra comma, and wrong font that somehow slipped past me, those will be corrected.
Small Caveat
It may be that for your current resume the job title is more important than the company. However, we could imagine a scenario when the employer itself might carry more weight. I worked for UNKNOWN SOFTWARE COMPANY, or I worked at GOOGLE or MICROSOFT. This depends on who the employer was, what job/company you are applying for, and what you are trying to highlight.
Small clarification
I'm happy that you've gotten something from my comments, and I agree with Nathaniel. The point I wanted to make was not necessarily that your position should be more prominent than the company. It's just that on your resume it was listed before the company name, but less prominently. My eye was immediately drawn to the company name, and I almost overlooked the title. Like I said, I just felt the title was hidden. This could be as simple a fix as just moving it below the company name.
Resume Revisions
After reading my feedback and the resume redux blog, I have found a few things that need to be changed in my resume. The first thing that I think I will do is add dates to the activities section at the bottom of my resume. After performing the quadrant and column tests, I realized that this was the only section that did not have a column on the right side, making it look slightly off-balance. Another problem that I had in the formatting area was with the minors that I listed in the right column of my education section. I offset the GPA's for these minors, which originally made sense for some reason, but after reading the feedback I realize that it would look better to be aligned in a straight line. I will also remove the list of semesters that I received honors and replace it with a statement of the number of semesters that I received honors.
I also need to make some changes in the experience section on my resume. I put dashes after the company names which, again, made sense at the time but just look funny now. I will remove those and revise the bullets that I have listed under each job. Some of my statements are a little vague and need to be revised using action verbs and better descriptions. I am not sure exactly what changes I will make here yet, as that will take some time and thinking to figure out. The last formatting error that I need to correct is to delete the blank page that somehow attached itself to the end of my resume. It wasn't there as a word document and I didn't realize it was there as a pdf but I need to figure out why it is there and get rid of it. This wouldn't make much of a difference if I was submitting the resume in person, but if I sent my resume to someone online they may see it as a reason to throw my resume in the trash.
Thoughts on Revising
Using the design tests, I was able to come up with a few ideas for redesigning my resume. With respect to the column test, I think that I may want to improve my alignment throughout the page. Everything on the right side of my resume is aligned to the right side of the page, and most of my bullet points are indented. I'd like to try to align everything consistently to see how it looks. When using the squint test, I noticed that my eyes are drawn to the education and work experience sections. I'm pretty sure that the font size of the headers is 1 point larger than the others, which was done on purpose to draw there reader's eyes. Apparently it's effective, so I may leave it as is. Finally, the quadrant test doesn't show any extreme blank spaces, but I might consider changing my "references" section to a single sentence to save space at the bottom, leaving more space for activities.
indenting bullet points is good
Keep in mind that the handout doesn't say that indenting bullets is bad. Notice that when it revises for better column structure on page 7 it uses indented bullet points in the experience section. (The column of dates should also have an aligned left edge, but for some reason it doesn't...) Indeed, you almost always need to indent bullet points to reinforce their subordinate status. Remember that information works as units, both in terms of content and format. My point is that don't think you have to force everything into three columns or something. Want you want is a structure that is intentional and accessible, and a column design can help with this. Look at the example on page 7 of the handout as a guide (but please, make sure your dates have a clean left edge, unlike that example).
Resume Revisions
While my resume does not follow the suggested left layout pattern, I do think that the contact information is easy to find without overdoing it. When performing the column test, the most important headings are to the left with the sub-headings going towards the right. It seems as though I have too much white space on the page when I perform the quadrant test. A squint test reveals the column headings sticking out which is what I wanted them to do when I wrote the document.
To make my resume better, I think I will align the column headings to the left instead of in the center of the page. I might add some more detail under the headings so there isn’t so much white space on the document.
Fixin' up the Resume
From looking at the comments my fellow peers made I can see what to change as they are all good points. For one I plan to format the top of my information page and make it stand out more than it did before. When I was looking at the other resumes it seemed that mine was lackluster in aesthetic quality. I will look into other options that do not look like a template. Another section I plan to work on more is the “Educational Skills” section which will transform into the “Technical Skills” section. At the time I added it I was not sure what to call it, and the suggested title sounds a lot better. I will also re-word the section to make it sound more professional.
First Impressions
The top of the page is, in many ways, the reader's first impression. You want your name, and the elements around, to create the kind of impression you want the reader to assess the rest of the resume with. What kind of personality, for instance, do you convey by the way you tell them your name?
Here are two different headers (one is from Nathaniel's CV and the other is from Jeremy's):
Resume Revision
After reading the comments made in regards to my resume it appears I should get rid of my activities section and maybe include something like a skills section. It was also pointed out that my choice of text is somewhat dull and plain so I am going to use a different font to spice it up a bit and help catch the eye. I can use the squint and distance test to possibly help me find a new text. According to my two reviews I need to do a little work on my experience section because the last two say the same things, so I should change it up a little and give more detail.
Resume Reflection
After reading over the suggestions for my resume, I realize there is plenty of room for improvement. One thing that I will add is a permanent address. This will be added to the right of my current address using a table. I will evaluate my resume using the quadrant test. There are some places that have too much white space. Most likely, I will change the formatting of my work experience to help fix the issue with white space. One minor change that I will make is centering my name. This change will help bring attention to the most important part of my resume, my name. With these changes, I feel that I will have a much more effective resume.
Resume Ideas
After looking at my resume I think that I need to work on the design and overall layout. I have always thought about putting a skills section in my resume but have never witnessed a well written skills section. Some other small aesthetic features such as font size and font type are the features that I noticed the most on other people’s resumes. I just used the default font on Microsoft Word but it seems like a different font might be a better eye catcher. One other thing that I noticed was how people separated the sections in the resumes. Some used lines and others used just extra space. I used lines in my resume and might reconsider how I separate the sections on my resume.
Resume Revision
After reading the suggestions for my resume there are several things I need to change. I am going to have to make my objective statement a little more specific and try to add a career goal to it. I will also have to change the way that I bolded and underlined several different headings. I will most likely also change the formatting of my skills and experience sections. I am probably also going to have to omit a few things in my experience section, due to the lack of relativity to the job I am applying for. I will also probably try to add a few aesthetic items to my contact information to try and make it more appealing. The biggest thing I am going to try and work on is to make my different columns more apparent and pronounced.
Resume Changes
After reviewing comments on my resume, I will improve the section of relevant coursework by removing unnecessary details and modify the order of importance. For the experience I will change the title United States Steel to US Steel, as a former colleague suggested. Also analyze the verbs to change to more powerful parallel verbs. Under education I will remove I plan to remove my high school education, as on comment stated to list only the collegiate education.
After, using these suggestions I hope that these changes can lead to a better chance of having my resume approved by a company.
Zebulon Rouse
RE: Resume Changes
"After reviewing comments on my resume, I will improve the section of relevant coursework by removing unnecessary details and modify the order of importance."
Ok, but what are you removing and modifying?
"Also analyze the verbs to change to more powerful parallel verbs."
Good move, but explicate what you are changing and why. Specifics, specifics, specifics always triumph, in our comments and in our documents.
Resume Revisions
After reading the comments about my resume and the evaluating your resume design pdf, I have quite a few ideas on how to improve my resume. The most striking one was the column test in the pdf. My resume is very similar to the one they use in the example as one that needs to be redone. Along with reformatting my resume so the columns match up better, I also plan on changing some formatting errors that were pointed out in my comments. (eg Current/permanent address formatting is misaligned) Hopefully these changes will improve my design and increase the attention my resume gets from potential employers.
Patrick Griffin
pgriffin@purdue.edu
Resume Adjustments
I think that I will need to make significant revisions to my resume to improve its design and make it more aesthetically pleasing. I think that I attempted to squeeze too much information onto one page and that I could really simplify things down a bit to make it less clustered and difficult to follow. This would also involve the inclusion of bullets to better organize the information. I was reluctant to include these, even after reading about them in the resume design handout, because I'd seen other resumes similarly formatted like mine and felt it was fine. I think I'm really getting the picture now though that my resume is, in fact, too difficult to follow in the format that I've been using.
Revising Resume
From the advice given in the article, I plan on taking several steps to improve the design of my resume. The first thing is to remove the automatically generated hyperlink of my e-mail address. When I applied the "quadrant test", I found most of my resume made good use of space except for the top. I plan on moving some of my contact information to the left and right while maintaining my name in the middle. I also plan on enlarging my name to make it stand out more. Using the "squint test", my resume is visually appealing from a distance, so no changes are needed here.
Revisions
After reading the redux and attached handout, I realized I need to do some quadrant and column work. My top right quadrant is a little barren, so I will look into changing my education information around while trying not to upset the left side. I am going to try out some bullet points for my skills and experiences sections. I also need to remove the hyperlinked email, something that I forgot to do the first time around. I will be looking into rewriting my objective, as suggested, as well as various descriptions throughout my resume. I also need to try using a wider variety of parallel action verbs.
Resume Revisions
First off, I will make an easy change and make my addresses two different columns. This will help my column structure as well as make them of equivalent importance. I may change my objective statement slightly, including a phrase that describes how I will help my prospective company. I will try to use more parallel verbs in my bullet points which was recommended from my peers. Lastly, my skills/activities section could use some work, such as being more specific and focusing more on the potential job.
Redesign
After reading the “Evaluating Your Resume’s Design” PDF, I’ve collected a number of improvements that I will make before I consider the draft final. For starters, I will redesign the overall layout to be table-formatted, as opposed to the margin and tabbed indentations it uses now. Furthermore, I will reconsider the layout of my work experience and skills/certifications sections as these together offset the column test. If I shortened the line-length in my work experience and divided my skills into 2 columns, it would yield a more appealing column layout. I was rather pleased with the results I gathered in performing the squint and distance tests against my resume. However, in reviewing the quadrant test, I realizedI failed to make proper use of the most important section of the resume, the top and more specifically, top left corner. In revising my resume I will add my permanent contact information and realign each contact section to opposing sides of the page, leaving my name and email centered.
Revising my Resume...
The more I think about my approach for my resume, I realize it is in desperate need of an upgrade. This is the same original format that I took from Windows Office a good amount of time ago. And come to think of it, I think the little paper clip guy helped me out (it was that long ago). One of the most important flaws of my resume with respect to design is that it is terribly out dated. Compared to other resumes, it has been cluttered with add ons over the past few years making it difficult to read and making it not stick out. When I revise my resume, I am going to pay attention to bold areas I want the reader to look at, organization, and limit my information.
Overall I feel my resume
Overall I feel my resume passes the Column test mentioned in this article, but there are some possible alignment issues I may consider changing. I am not sure that the spacing between my Dates, Business names, and places are placed efficiently, I will move these to improve the overall look. I will most definitely be changing the font of my resume, as it was mentioned more than once by the other students (thanks!). I’m not sure what I can do with it, but I may try moving the contact information that is on the top of the page. It will be difficult to place it anywhere else, but I will see what I can do!
Thanks
JFlitt
www.JFlitt.com
Resume Plan of Action
The feedback I received on my resume was definitely very helpful in pointing out some of the weaknesses of my draft. One of my reviewers liked my career summary, the other did not. I'm going to keep it because I think it's a better tool than an objective statement for saying what I want to say, which is "I've done X, and this is how I'm going to apply it to become Y." I do plan on clarifying some of the language and trying to cut down on the wording. I also think I've sold myself short on my 3 internship experiences with Mass. Electric. I'm going to break each session out to convey the amount of experience I've had. I also might flesh out my skills section a little more and add some some skills that are specifically relevant to project engineering, which is the area I'm going for. I am also going to take my coffee shop experience off because as one of my reviewers said, it's irrelevant. I'm playing with leaving the pizza cook job on, though, because it's a popular local brand in the location where I'm applying and I think it might give an extra little boost of famliarity.
I'm also going to mess around with the format, paying particular attention to the columnar organization. I want to make my format a little more inviting, but since my field is technical I want to keep it fairly simple.
Revision of my resume
I am planning on revising my resume using the quadrant test method. I have noticed and have been told that I have way too much white space throughout my resume that needs to be properly used. I think that by just re adjusting my tabs that set indentations I will be able to better utilize the space on my resume and include much more valuable information to make it more appealing. As it sits, my resume isn't very appealing and doesn't catch the readers eye very well. Hopefully by redesigning it and utilizing currently unused space, I will be able to make it that much better and increase my chances for a job.
Resume Revisions
I had some really good feedback on my resume. Thanks to the individuals who commented on my resume I have some new ideas I might be implementing. As far as design goes I had two pieces of constructive criticism that I will probably implement. The first is in regards to the amount of whitespace on the bottom and top of my resume, and the second is in regards to the way my coursework is listed out.
I plan on hopefully taking up a bit of this whitespace by expanding my coursework into a bulleted list. It would be consistent with the rest of the document and take up some of the space. Also, I was advised to possibly cut down on my coursework, and focus on the more specialized coursework I have experienced here. By cutting this list down and listing out some more specialized coursework that really interests me, rather than almost all high level topics I've covered, I will hopefully fill up the aforementioned whitespace and catch a recruiters eye with the relevant coursework that actually interests me more.
My changes
The things that I will do to make my resume better are: I will have my GPA listed as out of a 4.0 scale, I will move my job titles over the far right of the page, I will also add the dates to my job experience so that the employer knows how long I have worked at the position. I will also change the font size to a little bit smaller for the city and state names, so that they do not take away from the more important parts of the resume. I also plan to add a relevant skills section in order to incorporate more of my career related experiences that are not necessarily job experiences.
Resume Corrections
After reviewing the comments regarding my resume draft I plan on changing a few things to make it easier to read as well as accurately portray my qualifications for the job.
Both DigitalSHU and Chris offered formatting suggestions to make things easier to read on my resume. I plan on changing the font of the dates as well as removing my class status and replacing it with my expected graduation date.
Chris pointed out the fact that my resume mostly focuses on my managerial experience and that I should include a section to demonstrate my technical qualifications.
I feel that by making these slight changes I can make my resume much easier to someone to read in a short amount of time.
Andy
Test? What Test?
Giving what I've learned from the reading, I should make some adjustment in my resume. I didn't realize this but, I would fail the column test. My job experience is not justify with the objective title and or with anything else. The dates along the sides also seem to be off from the column test. Everything appears to be jagged along the left side which does look unprofessional.
With the other tests correction, my resume would pass the squint and distance test. Everything is layout correctly(in my opinion) to attract the eye to the specific areas intended. The quadrant test is another test I wouldn't pass unless changes are make as suggested above.
Revision Plans
After some very constructive feedback, some things have been brought to my attention that need reviewed. Upon re-reading my objective statement and reading Zebulon’s comments, it needs to be much stronger. As it stands, it focuses primarily on me, and not what I can bring to the company. I also agree with winninraces about selling myself through my job performance, rather than simply informing. I think by increasing my work experience section, I can also help bring the right side of the page into a better column. As it stands now the right side of the page looks abrupt and sharp, not something I want a resume reader to see when he is scanning right to left. It was also brought to my attention there were some small, but important details that I have overlooked. Luckily my peers had some very sharp eyes.
Changes
Basically, I can see three main changes with respect to design layout that I'm planning (of course others that are less significant). The first is with regard to the quadrant test. The lower right quadrant has much less text than the rest of the document-this obviously needs to be filled out. The column test revealed that I should align certain details of my resume, like dates of when I worked in various places, to the right to match the symmetry I had started to set up in the heading of the resume. This should also help with the quadrant issue. Finally, the squint test revealed that I should make my section headings stand out more-they seem to meld too much with the text below it. Possibly increase the font size of the heading or decrease the font size of the text.
Resume Re-design
The biggest changes I would make after reviewing the "Evaluating Your Resume's Design" is relevant to the quadratic, squint, and column test. With the quadratic test I realize that the bottom quadrants of my paper are lacking information and have tons of blank space. I should either be more descriptive with my experience, because experience is the bottom of my resume, or I should add more job experience.
After performing the squint test it came to my attention that my font and format are all the same and need some variation. I thought maybe I could either highlight Purdue University and Griffith University, or Italicize them. With the column test I believe my resume performs well horizontally; however, vertically there is not much organization. The lines I drew in this test looked like the "bad" example. All in all the reading gave me several ideas I can use to improve my resume.
Resume changes
I would love to hear what you all would have had to say about my resume, but I did not recieve any comments on it. So I had my wife evaluate it and thought about what I would do to change my resume for the better. If I were sending my resume out to many different employers, I would create a great career objective, but I have never had a career objective. I admire many of you who have a specific career that you have in mind, but have never found one thing that I want to do. If I were to change my resume, I would delete "references available upon request" because it is implied, but I would add more details about my work experience to eleborate on what I have already expressed to potential employers. I hope that others in the class will help me on other things that I can improve on to make my resume as good as possible.
Mike Sheridan
Improvements
The column test mentioned in the document got me to look at my resume and consider the alignment of columns. It seems that the columns were almost aligned horizontally but not perfectly. Specifically, I would change the columns of bulleted items to match the indentation of my address on the top right of the page. That should create a slightly neater look to the whole resume.
As for the other checks, it seems that my resume passes them: My contact information stands out well. I pass the quadrant test. The section headings stand out and do not take too much space. The squint test shows my professional experience which I intended to stand out the most. And so on.