1. Put the most important information first

The first thing on your resume should be your name. It should be bold and with a larger font than the rest of the text. Make sure that your contact details are clearly listed. Secondly, both the name and contact details should be included on all the pages of the resume (if you have more than one). This point is valid both to the overall order of your resume, as well as to the individual sections. Most of the times your previous work experience will be the most important part of the resume, so put it at the top. When describing your experiences or skills, list the most important ones first.

2. Avoid long, boring and non-specific lists.

Do not just list adjectives such as “creative”, “hard worker”, “motivated”, etc. This will make you appear to be artificially inflating your resume. Most employers will skip over them or worse, stop reading your resume altogether. Back them up with real life and work experiences.

3. Make sure to use the right keywords

Most companies (even smaller ones) are already using digital databases to search for candidates. This means that the HR department will run search queries based on specific keywords. These keywords will usually be nouns. The job description and related job ads will give you an idea of what key words the employer might be using for his search. If your resume doesn’t have the keywords related to the job you are applying for, add them in the skills summary before you submit it.

4. Use effective titles

Like it or not, employers will usually make a judgment about your resume in 5 seconds. Under this time frame the most important aspect will be the titles that you listed on the resume, so make sure they grab the attention. Try to be as descriptive as possible, giving the employer a good idea about the nature of your past work experiences. For example:

Bad title: Accounting
Good title: Management of A/R and A/P and Recordkeeping

In most cases, the title is more important than the company you worked for so list it first and highlight it

5. Proofread, then Proofread again

One small typo and your chances of getting hired could slip. Proofreading it once is not enough, so do it twice, three times or as many as necessary. If you don’t know how to proofread effectively, here are 8 tips that you can use.

6. Use bullet points

No employer will have the time (or patience) to read long paragraphs of text. Make sure, therefore, to use bullet points and short sentences to describe your experiences, educational background and professional objectives.

7. Where are you going?

Including professional goals can help you by giving employers an idea of where you are going, and how you want to arrive there. You don’t need to have a special section devoted to your professional objectives, but overall the resume must communicate it. If you decide to list them, make sure they are not generic.

8. Avoid including the obvious

Avoid statements like “Available for interview” or “References available upon request”. If you are sending a resume to a company, it should be obvious that you are available for an interview and that you will provide references if requested. Just avoid items that will make the employer think “no kidding!”

9. Explain the benefits of your skills

Merely stating that you can do something will not catch the attention of the employer. If you manage to explain how it will benefit his company, and to connect it to tangible results, then you will greatly improve your chances.

10. Achievements instead of responsibilities

Resumes that include a long list of “responsibilities included…” are plain boring, and not efficient in selling yourself. Instead of listing responsibilities, therefore, describe your professional achievements. In order to make them as solid as possible, use numbers. Don’t merely mention that you increased the annual revenues of your division. Say that you increased them by $100,000, by 78%, and so on. DON’T EXAGERATE. (See tip #18)

11. No pictures

Unless the employer specifically requested it or you are applying for a job where the physical traits are very important (e.g., modeling, acting and so on), you should avoid attaching your picture to the resume.

12. One resume for each employer

One of the most common mistakes that people make is to create a standard resume and send it to all the job openings that they can find. Sure it will save you time, but it will also greatly decrease the chances of landing an interview (so in reality it could even represent a waste of time). Tailor your resume for each employer. The same point applies to your cover letters. A good starting point to tailor your resume for a specific employer is to identify what possible problems he might have at hand. Try to understand the market of the company you are applying for a job, and identify what kind of difficulties they might be going through. After that illustrate on your resume how you and your skills would help to solve those problems.

13. Avoid age discrimination

It is illegal to discriminate people because of their age, but some employers do these considerations nonetheless. Why risk the trouble? Unless specifically requested, do not include your age on your resume.

14. You don’t need to list all your work experiences

If you have job experiences that you are not proud of, or that are not relevant to the current opportunity, you should just omit them. If you have been working for 20 years or more, there is no need to have 2 pages of your resume listing all your work experiences, starting with the job at the local coffee shop at the age of 17! Most experts agree that the last 15 years of your career are enough.

15. Go with what you got

If you never had any real working experience, just include your summer jobs or volunteer work. If you don’t have a degree yet, mention the title and the estimated date for completion. As long as those points are relevant to the job in question, it does not matter if they are official or not.

16. Don’t include irrelevant information

Irrelevant information such as political affiliation, religion and sexual preference will not help you. In fact it might even hurt your chances of landing an interview. Just skip it.

As far as hobbies, unless you are 100% sure that some of your hobbies are relevant to the position, avoid mentioning them. The fact that you like stamp collecting or spending time with your children just clutters up the resume. Share these with your friends and not with potential employers.

17. Use Mr. and Ms. when appropriate

If you have a gender neutral name like Alex or Ryan make sure to include the Mr. or Ms. prefix, so that employers will not get confused about your gender.

18. Be Truthful

Seems like a no brainer, but you would be amused to discover the amount of people that lie in their resumes. Even small lies should be avoided. Apart from being wrong, most HR departments do background checks these days, and if you are busted it might ruin your credibility for good.

19. Get someone else to review your resume

This goes beyond proofreading. Get a third party’s opinion on the tone and structure of the resume. They may be more likely to see it as a prospective employer would and be in a better position to evaluate the overall quality and make suggestions for improvement.

20. One or two pages

Most employers and recruiting specialists agree that one or two pages should be the maximum. Just keep in mind that, provided all the necessary information is there, the shorter your resume, the better. If you feel it is absolutely necessary to go beyond two pages, make sure your skills and experience are effectively summarized up front so that the employer will WANT to read the rest, not HAVE to read the rest.

21. Use action verbs

Action verbs are basically verbs that will get noticed more easily, and that will clearly communicate what your experience or achievement were. Examples include managed, coached, enforced and planned. Here you can find a complete list of action verbs divided by skill category.

22. Make it look professional

If you are going to use a paper version of your resume, make sure to use a decent printer. Laser printers usually get the job done. Plain white paper is the preferred one as well.Do not use a colored background, fancy fonts or images on your resume. Sure, you might think that the little flowers will cheer up the document, but other people might just throw it away at the sight.

23. Update your resume regularly

It is a good idea to update your resume on a regular basis. Add all the new information that you think is relevant, as well as courses, training programs and other academic qualifications that you might receive along the way. This is the best way to keep track of everything and to make sure that you will not end up sending an obsolete document to the employer.

24. Mention who you worked with

If you have reported or worked with someone that is well known in your industry, it could be a good idea to mention it on the resume. The same thing applies to presidents and CEOs. If you reported to or worked directly with highly ranked executives, add it to the resume.

25. Lists all your positions

If you have worked a long time for the same company (over 10 years) it is a good idea to list all the different positions and roles that you had during this time separately. You probably had different responsibilities and developed different skills on each role, so the employer will like to know it, especially if it shows a pattern of advancement.

26. Create an email proof formatting

It is very likely that you will end up sending your resume via email to most companies. Apart from having a Word document ready to go as an attachment, you should also have a text version of your resume that does not look disfigured in the body of the email or in online forms. Attachments might get blocked by spam filters, and many people just prefer having the resume on the body of the email itself.

27. No pronouns

You resume should not contain the pronouns “I” or “me.” That is how we normally structure sentences, but since your resume is a document about your person, using these pronouns is actually redundant.

28. Consider getting professional help

If you are having a hard time writing your resume or if you are receiving no response whatsoever from companies, you could consider hiring a professional resume writing service. There are both local and online options are available, and usually the investment is well worth it.

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