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For the second part of the resume edit lecture let's take a look at resume number two from
Peter. This resume appears to be a combination format, showing both dates of work history
and skills. His name is in bold and at the top of the page, but I think it would be better
to center his name so as to draw the reader's attention. Moving on to the objective. He
states what position he wants, but he does not state with what organization or what skills
he will utilize for this position. The objective should always state what position you want,
with the organization or companies name and then two or three skills you will utilize
in the position. Peter's objective however is incomplete. Moving down into summary of
qualifications. His first two bullets are sufficient, however his last bullet is too
vague. Remember how Joshua's resume utilized numbers to quantify his accomplishments, here
Peter needs to state specific titles and dates of his published writings, as well as specific
presentations he has completed. Moving down into relevant accomplishments his resume becomes
pretty confusing. I see the date to the left, but I'm not clear if these are all titles
he currently has or had at some point. I can see that he has had a lot of great experience
related to the position, but I can't be sure what his role was in the organizations listed
or his responsibilities. If you'll notice as you read under relevant accomplishments
your eye does not know where to go and the information becomes jumbled. If I could guess
this is where an employer would stop reading and this resume would probably end up in the
trash. Because we are looking at this resume for the purpose of learning we'll move on.
The area fundraising and public relations should be titled job history or job experience.
The other important note here is that each bullet must begin with a powerful action verb
to make an impact on the reader and to quickly state what you did in your previous job. Moving
down the resume it only becomes more confusing and it is hard to tell what job titles he
held when and his previous work history as it relates to the position. This is a resume
that needs to work! So I took the liberty of doing some quick edits. Here is the new,
improved and updated version of Peter's resume. You can see how a few minor changes make such
a difference in appearance and your ability to make sense of his skills and accomplishments
as they relate to the job he is trying to get. First, I put his name and contact information
at the top and made them easily accessable to the potential employer. Then I created
a more effective objective by indicating exactly what position he wants with what company and
listed the skills he has that are applicable. Last, I simply took the information he already
had in his resume and used bold and underline to clearly define the different sections of
his resume. I also used bullets to guide the reader's eye toward important information
and inserted action verbs into his job descriptions to make an impact on the reader. It's still
not an A resume, but it's much better than the original and it may just get him an interview!
I hope that from the two lectures on resume editing you have learned how to look at your
own resume with a new pair of eyes. You should be able to assess the quality of your resume
and make the edits needed to make yourself a contender for any job you apply for.