This is the 3rd installment of the “Before and After Resume Makeover” article for Career Cloud by me, Chris Fields of the ResumeCrusade. My intent is to share something new for each of these articles. I believe each resume writing project is different and requires different things. The challenge with this resume was to show the breadth of experience without making him seem old – in fact making it harder to determine his true age.
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On the before resume you see there is experience dating back to the eighties – yes the funky little shack 80’s. Also then there is that college graduation date from 1980. Even if you didn’t want to discriminate, it’s hard not to see those dates and figure out that’s nearly 40 years ago.
2nd, the format is not very attractive or inviting. The summary under the name and address is full of adjectives that only serve as empty descriptions. The key skills section is okay but needs to be updated with more modern industry language and those terms or phrases need to be chopped down to one or two word phrases.
Finally, position is described in paragraph format, I believe we all know by now that bullet points are the preferred and much easier to read.
Here’s the before. It's a two pager.
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And here’s the after. It's down to one page.
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As you can see the Career Profile gives you the industry experience right away, then the “Key Skills” is now “Areas of Expertise”. It’s been updated with words from job descriptions found on the internet. Also notice, I added a “Major Accomplishments” sub-section for show some major contributions and achievements. After talking to the client I learned that he had some additional education and certifications, so I added them at the very end to anchor the resume.
Remember, some of the information on this after resume has been changed, removed (e.g. the name and some bullet points) and does not represent client’s finished product. Want to broaden your job search horizons? Don't miss our round-up of the best job posting sites for more opportunities.
