| |
Checklist for
Resumes
A resume serves as a marketing tool that summarizes
your relevant experiences and highlights your accomplishments. The
following checklist may be useful to ensure your resume has key elements.
Contact Information . . .
-
Is it easy to find and read your personal information (name,
address, phone number, email, and URLs)?
-
Does your name stand out
from the rest of the text?
-
If your resume is more than one page,
does your name appear on the other pages?
Content . . .
-
Are categories placed in appropriate order with relevance to
the job ad?
-
Are the headings logically organized? Are the important
headings
in positions of prominence? Are they grammatically parallel
to each other?
-
Is the use of bulleting or listing appropriate?
Is it parallel?
-
Have you used action verbs in your lists?
-
If the resume is a
chronological one, is the information given in reverse chronological
order? If the resume is
a skills one, are the
headings appropriate (do they describe skills)? Do they
accurately describe the information under them, and are
they parallel?
-
Is the resume free from spelling errors?
-
Are the references easy
to find?
-
Is the reference information complete (name and title,
institution or organization, complete address,
phone numbers)?
Visual Appeal . . .
-
Is your resume balanced visually?
-
Is your use of white space
appropriate? Is it used well to emphasize and organize important
information?
-
Are the headings emphasized (bolded, underlined,
etc.)?
-
Are the headings easy to find?
-
Is the paper the resume is printed
on appropriate in color and weight?
-
If your resume in two pages
or more, have you effectively used all white space? (At least
two-thirds of the final
page of the resume
should be full.)
Finally, pretend you are a potential employer. Evaluate the effectiveness
of your resume. How/why is it effective? Where might your resume need
improvement?
|
|
