Help! How do I edit resumes?

Editing resumes is a little different from editing most types of documents we see here at Kibin, which means some editors are a little hesitant to pick them up. Never fear, though! Our own Crystal W. is a veteran resume-spiffer-upper, and she put together the following super-handy crash course for resume editing.

Design Considerations

Good use of white space

Check out the following resource: https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/resume-look-important-as-content

Clean, professional layout

Enough said!

Name in large font size 

This helps keep someone’s name more memorable when a prospective employer is reviewing a ton of resumes.

Page numbers or header

Make sure there are page numbers in the footer or an abbreviated header with name, phone, and email on subsequent pages if the resume is multiple pages.

Print view

View the resume in print view to make sure nothing would get cut off if it was printed out. A lot of people really push the margins out to fit more on a page, but this can often cut off parts of the text when printed. 

Wording

Concision

Wording should be as concise as possible because prospective employers skim and scan them. Some general things to look for include:

  • Avoid “responsible for” and the use of personal pronouns
  • Omit articles (a, an, the) when they’re not necessary for clarity
  • Use information as adjectives rather than in prepositional phrases. Example: “effective” rather than “in an effective manner” OR “client and customer newsletters” rather than “newsletters for clients and customers”
Action verbs

Ensure the consistent use of action verbs to start bullet points, including proper tense (i.e., present tense for current jobs, past tense for previous jobs).

Objective statements/Summaries of qualifications

Avoid generic objective statements that don’t really say anything other than “To work in X field and utilize my skills, blah, blah, blah.” Instead, tailoring the objective to the company or making a detailed object is preferable (see:  The Only Time It's OK to Use an Objective Statement on Your Resume) or writing a professional summary/style statement (see: https://www.resume-now.com/job-resources/resumes/how-to-write-summary) is a better option. The Interview Guys website also has good examples of tailoring and when to use an objective vs a summary statement.

References

Never ever use “references available upon request” or list references on the resume. This can actually get people’s resumes in the “toss” pile if it’s on there. This is assumed. References should be kept on a separate sheet and handed over only when asked for by a prospective employer (usually happens at the interview stage).

Achievements/Accomplishments

Quantifying accomplishments shows scope and depth of experience. Here are some helpful resources on this topic:

What employers want to know (and how to present it to them)

Prospective employers are really looking to answer three things when they’re looking at a resume:

1.   What did you do?

2.   How did you do it?

3.   Can you do it again for me?

Aim to have bullet points with three of the following four things (with the first obviously needing to be included always):

1.   What you actually did (Process customer complaints, Wrote newsletters, etc.)

2.   What you did to accomplish it

3.   Why you did it or who you did it for, if applicable

4.   The results and/or improvements (i.e., what was the resulting value of the action—this is really where quantifying is great if it works with the accomplishment, but it can also be a qualitative improvement, too)

For fields/positions that require technical or software skills/platforms, I also make sure that there’s a section detailing these. If they’re crucial skills to job function (i.e., programming languages and knowing different operating systems are crucial for software developers), then I suggest the list be at the top of the resume and broken down as much as possible. For example, for a software developer, I would suggest something like this if they didn’t have it or had the information included differently:

Technical Skills

Programming Languages: Language 1, language 2, etc.

Operating Systems/Platforms: System 1, system 2, etc.

Software: Software 1, software 2, etc.

Handy resources

Lots of great stuff on here. You can look up stuff as needed too if you want (I do often): Resume Writing Tips from Monster.com

Definite read as it highlights things to avoid: Resume Tips: 6 Resume Writing Mistakes to Avoid

The Monster site has tons of great info, as do other links on the stuff I’ve included here, so you can always search them when working on a specific resume. You might want to look up samples of resumes for various careers or positions if it’s one you’re not familiar with. Looking at some examples while also considering all of the above (since there are bad examples out there too) can help, too.