By Khalilah Starks
Since the inception of my blog, I’ve done a couple of posts about useful strategies to employ when writing an effective resume. Today, I’m going to take it a step further by showing an example of a well written resume that has received lots of attention from recruiters.
Here’s the story – Jane Doe is a powerful Sales Executive looking to apply to a Sales Director position. She’s had a very successful career with many major milestones. Her resume is 2 pages and professionally formatted with enough white space to facilitate skimming by recruiters. She’s had a phenomenal career, exceeding many sales targets that have been set by her employers. You will see that, in addition to her job duties, her resume heavily focuses on her career accomplishments. Her accomplishments are actually highlighted in bulleted format to help recruiters quickly identify them. You can also see that, instead of a boring Objective, she has an eye catching Career Profile section which summarizes her career achievements and sales skills. Additionally, she has an Area of Expertise section to further highlight her skills. All of these techniques create a visually attractive document that sufficiently markets her skills and experience, and is easy to skim in 30 seconds!
Take a peek at her resume below:
Great information! So here’s the question? One page or two page? I have spoken with hiring authority HR leaders, professional recruiters, business owners and state representatives (IDES for example), and have received different responses. Is the expectation driven by specific industries?
Hi Vaughn! Thanks for visiting! Great question! I’m sure that you’ve received different responses to this question because length is driven by industry and career level. For example, the higher education field is more accepting of longer resumes than corporate. The general rule of thumb is no more than 2 pages. But, substance is more important than length. Your goal is to provide the relevant information needed to demonstrate your ability to do the job and meet the employer’s needs. If it only takes 1 page to accomplish this, then 1 page is all that you need. A college student should only have one page because they don’t have the experience or accomplishments to support having more than one page (and recruiters are only expecting to see one page). But, typically once you’ve progressed in your career (i.e. 7-10 years, promotions) and experienced significant accomplishments, a second page will probably become necessary. It’s really on a case by case basis though.
Can you repost/reload the resume example? The link isn’t working and I’d love to see an example.
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[…] time. Additionally, you can see me talking about effective resumes on the WCIA Morning News Show here. Once you’ve written your masterpiece, have a professional review it to provide you with unbiased […]
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