I spent $500 having a professional write my resume for me and now a recruiter is suggesting I make changes. What are your tips on resume writing?

Great Question --We are seeing a nice steady uptick in the employment market which hopefully, will continue in 2010 and this is a good time over the Holidays to refresh your resume and reflect on your most recent contributions. Here are our suggestions when updating your paperwork:

1. Don’t pay $500 for someone else to write your resume. No one can reflect your experience better than yourself so find a simple format you like: Summary, Work Experience, Education etc...and write it yourself.
2. Don’t cut and paste your job description and call it a resume. Do sit down and write down your major contributions /achievements in all the roles you’ve been in for the last 15 years and focus on those.
3. Quantify your contributions with metrics; whether they are percentages of savings, dollars, hours, etc.. People are hired to either save money or to make money so keep that in mind as you think about your achievements.
4. Use active oriented words when possible like “drive”, “initiated”, “launched”, “generated”, “created”, “designed” etc..instead of passive words.
5. Do use bullets to highlight your contributions vs. a paragraph format. It is much easier to scan and/or read.
6. Don’t rely on spell check, because a word can be spelled right but it may be the wrong word. Have a detail oriented person edit it for you.
7. In your summary avoid saying “25+ years” in the first 3 sentences. Although we like to think our experience is valuable, too much experience can hurt you as well.
8. A resume is about your professional background and it is not the right forum to list your hobbies or church affiliations in detail.
9. Get rid of the fancy graphics because they cannot be downloaded into our databases.
10. If you have more than 5 yrs exp in a particular field, don’t feel like you have to have a 1 page resume. As long as you have powerful content, 2-3 pages are fine.

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