Rules for writing your first resume

Rules for writing your first resume Hey, all you college kids! Its time to get off your butts and start applying for jobs. Do not delude yourself into thinking you can wait until May. Spring is the time to be buying clothes for the job you already have. Top internships, management training programs, entry-level investment banking jobs and the other good jobs get filled early. After all, employers are not stupid. What are you going to do between now and June that will enhance your workplace value? For 99% of you, the answer is nothing. Thats why the juiciest companies beat the rush and hire the best candidates before anyone else can get to them. Based on my experience, Id say a good rule of thumb is that youll get one interview for every 50 resumes you send. Thats if youre great. If youre not great, double that resume number. And God help you if you do not have a decent resume. Even if youre great, with a lame resume, your greatness will not show. Here are the three most important rules to ensure your resume measures up: One page. Thats it. I dont care if you are the smartest person on earth or if you have founded six companies and sold each of them for a million dollars. Think of it this way. A resume gets only about 10 seconds to impress whoevers looking at it. So every line must say that you are amazing because you dont know where the persons eye will go first (though you can be sure the person wont read every line). People with resumes that exceed one page say, I couldnt get it down to a page. But heres what a two-page resume says about you: No ability to see the big picture. You are so mired in the details of your career that you dont know how to summarize it. This does not bode well for future career success. Cut your resume to one page. Every line must quantify success. A resume is not about what you did. A resume is about what you accomplished. Dont say: Managed two people and created a tracking system for marketing. Say: Managed the team that build a tracking system to decrease marketing costs 10%. Any college graduate can do what an employer tells them to. Not everyone will do it well. Show that youre a person who does things well. Think of it as the difference between writing, Went to my classes and took tests vs. Have a 3.5 GPA. I know what youre going to say next: I cant quantify my success. I didnt have those kind of jobs. You are wrong. Everyone has successes they can quantify. Lets say you had a babysitting job, which I hope not very many of you will have to put on your resume. But for the sake of argument, lets say you took care of two kids. You could write: Managed household in parents absence and helped kids to raise their grades one letter. Stupid, yes, but you need to make even stupid jobs sound marginally stupid. No paragraphs. I shouldnt have to list this last rule because no one should still be using paragraphs on their resumes. But recent grads do it all the time. In fact, my friend who edits my web site, and who is definitely very smart, showed me her resume and I nearly died: All paragraphs. No hiring manager reads paragraphs. With a stack of 500 resumes in front of her, shes scanning looking for something that stands out enough to warrant an interview. Nothing stands out in a paragraph. So by using them, you take yourself out of the running unless the hiring manager is your dads best friend and he has to read your entire resume. Most of you will say, No paragraphs? Everyone knows that rule. Good for you: a confidence booster. You will need it because its a tough job market out there. Now start sending out resumes. Think of each one you send as a lottery ticket. The more you have, the luckier youll feel.