How to upgrade your resume!

In this tutorial, we will show you how to structure your resume for maximum effect, as well as how to improve its visual design and typography. The goal is to maximize both clarity and readability. We will also tell you how to avoid common mistakes such as including irrelevant or redundant content, and making ineffective grammar and style choices. The best resumes highlight your strengths while downplaying your weaknesses (ethically), and this is what you should strive for.

1. An existing resume or CV
2. Microsoft Word or a similar word processing program (Google Docs also works!)
3. 1-2 hours of quiet time
4. Maximum mental energy (getting enough sleep is important!)

1. Skip the Objective section. It rarely helps and can easily pigeonhole and hurt you, unless you tailor it to every job you apply for.

2. Keep the Skills section concise, especially on a technical resume. Hiring managers often skip it because they look for your skills in the bullet points of your two most recent jobs, where they're presented in context.

3. Put your Education at the bottom. Unless you're a recent grad, this is where hiring managers look for it.

4. Use as few pages as possible, relative to the norm for your profession. Extraneous information diverts attention from the meat of your resume. It is important to be objective when deciding what information is truly relevant to potential employers. Providing too little information is a mistake, but providing too much is worse. 1-2 pages is ideal in most situations.

1. Do not mix future and past tenses for the same job. Bullet descriptions for your current job should be in the present tense (except for past projects) and bullets for past jobs should be in the past tense. You'd be amazed how many people fail to do this.
2. Do not underline one job title and italicize another. Do not underline one company name and increase the font size for another. Pick one style for each element and stick with it. If you make changes, triple check to make sure the changes are done across the board.
3. Do not mix & match fonts or font sizes unless you really know what you are doing. Unless you're a rockstar graphic designer applying to a world-class ad agency, you're better off being conservative than "creative."

To summarize: you have a lot of freedom when it comes to content & formatting choices when designing your resume, but inconsistency always looks sloppy.

1. Choose a subtle font that's easy on the eyes (nothing gaudy, please!). For example, Garamond is easier on the eyes than Times New Roman. Be sure to choose a font that most PCs and Macs have pre-installed. If you fall in love with an elegant (and conservative) but rare font, you can save your file as a PDF, just be sure to embed that font in the document or it will be substituted when viewed on a different computer. See this list of fonts common to most PCs and Macs.

2. Your font choice should also be determined by how your resume will be presented-sans serif fonts like Arial are best for viewing a resume on the screen, but serif fonts like Garamond look better when printed.

3. To increase readability and help the reader absorb & retain information, adjust your spacing. Studies have shown that maximum reading comprehension is attained when spacing is set between 1.15x and 1.20x the font size-for example, 11 point fonts should have 13 point spacing.

BONUS: Here's a killer tip from an MS Word guru. To automatically adjust line spacing in Word, select the text you want to adjust, then go to Format>Paragraph... In the Paragraph window, change 'Line Spacing:' to 'Multiple' and set 'At:' to 1.15 or 1.20. This method will give you perfect spacing regardless of what font size you choose.

Sometimes your time is too valuable to do things properly yourself, or maybe you just don't feel comfortable doing it. Sustainable Staffing Group provides 3 levels of professional resume editing services, from light edits to complete overhauls, all at a reasonable price.