Resume Service Reviews

Believe it or not, the format of your resume is going to have almost as much bearing to the content of the resume. When a recruiter has received a stack of a thousand resumes there is just no time to read through them all entirely. Normally a quick scan of about 10 seconds, and your resume makes it to round two or hits the trash. Making your resume easy to scan along with the proper formatting will drastically increase your chances of landing an interview. Many qualified candidates have missed opportunities because of ill-formatted resumes.

The current versions of Microsoft Office come with pre-formatted resumes. I will start by saying never use these. They are old, overused, and generally hideous in nature. Other templates do provide a great starting ground for your resume. One of my favorites is here. It provides multiple resume templates to fit each of your needs.

The next most important point deals with length. One page is plenty for the majority of people. If you have a large number of relevant skills or experiences, it is perfectly acceptable to have a two page resume. Any longer then this and you are pushing your luck. I once reviewed a 7 page resume with size 10 font. It looked ridicules and I simply tossed it. This is not your life story, remember.

Now for the nitty gritty details.
- Keep 1" margins across the entire document
- Keep all text as left justified
- Content should be 12 points and headers can be 14 points
- Use a consistent font (Georgia is my favorite) and font size across the resume

My special secret:
I advise to put a red page break line, to break up the various sections of your resume. This will break up the resume making it very easy to scan. It will also make your resume stand out amongst the sea of black and white. This simple red divider line creates these two benefits while maintaining total professionalism.

The final issue of resume format is to review your resume. I recommend emailing it out to your family and friends asking them to proofread it. This will also make sure all of your resume format is correct. Print it out for yourself to check tabs and spacing. When you are all done, read it over again. Nothing hurts more then one spelling mistake which will cost you the job opportunity. As a final step, save it as booth a word document and a pdf file. Both file types may be requested.

All of this tedious formatting can be done in seconds with this great product. It will truly save you loads of time when you are getting your resume ready.