Dear Jim:
Thank you for submitting your resume to Golden Resume Review.
Attached, please find a copy of your resume with possible revisions. You can see exaclty how the changes were made if you use Microsoft Word with "Track Changes" set to on (found in the "Tools" menu).
The following is a summary of our recommendations:
A word about formatting first. More and more companies today are scanning your paper resume or importing your electronic version into an internal database for search and later use by their hiring managers. As such, you should do your best to keep your formatting straightforward. For fonts, try to use only Times New Roman or Arial/Helvetica since those are found almost universally on every computer system. Bold is okay for highlighting, italics is usually okay, but underlining can sometimes cause problems. Bullet points are usually okay as they will either be ignored (and treated as sentences) or translated into asterisks (*) instead. Bullet points are also the most effective way of listing your experience. Be careful on creating box text as it often gets distorted in translation.
An interesting exercise to do is to take your resume as it is currently formatted and paste it into Windows Notepad, a program that strips all formatting from the text. It might not look pretty, but is it decipherable? This simulates the effects of dumping a formatted word document into a simple database. If it isn't decipherable, your data may be lost and your chances of getting a position with that company severely hampered.
Here are some specifics on your resume:
1. Change your career summary into an objective. Companies are interested in what you can do for them, not a list of everything you've done before. Make sure the objective describes what you want to do and what you bring to the organization. You may choose to have more than one version since you indicated you are interested in several financial options. I have written a sample objective on your resume.
2. Make sure you list your job duties from each of your jobs in the order of preference to the job you would like to get, not the one you had, don't include any responsibility on your resume that you don't want to do again. People can only infer that if it's on the resume you must want to do it. Try and work up results from what you have done. Flesh out the items you want to highlight. One's eye is drawn to the larger paragraphs and therefore indicate an increased interest. This is particularly important in those positions that are closest to what you want to do.
3. Remove the months from the years of work experience. This makes the resume flow better and prevents gaps in work.
4. Place your achievements first on the list within each job. In fact, write them so that you demonstrate responsibility, achievement, and results. Then list those other responsibilities that are important, but that you can't show results.
5. Use what I call the "So what" method. After every sentence say - "so what," if you can justify it, keep it, if not remove it.
6. Lastly, since you are building on your past experiences, you need to think about what you bring to an organization and how you can demonstrate this ability both on the resume and in an interview. Be prepared to discuss and show them your transferable skills.
I have attached some possible changes to your resume. Good luck and if you would like additional assistance, please call or e-mail me. |
