Whether you are hunting for your first job or finding yourself flipped back on the job market, you might feel like a fish out of water. Time is critical, you want your documents ready ASAP!

Take a deep breath. Here’s what you need – in quick digestible form – on your documents. Remember, if you need personalized support, just reach out.

Resume: the 2-page version of you

Ready? Go. It should be fast to read, I should know your top skills in 30 seconds or less – but not because you listed a bunch of adjectives in a “top skills” section at the top. Those are generic and sound like AI-generated bunk. I want real data – what have you done, when and where? Top achievement or two while you were there? That I want to know! Test yourself. Give your current resume to a friend. Time them 30 seconds and then ask them to tell you what they learned about you. If they don’t understand much about your work life and future potential, you need to do some work!

Your Header: At the top of the page in larger font than the rest of your document should be your name, phone and preferred email. Also include your geographic location so people know what time zone you are in. Do not repeat this header on following pages – use a different first page header. Remaining pages can have a header of “your last name + page number” in small font in the top right corner of the page.

Your Resume itself should be divided into easy to read categories. Commonly they are the following:

Education: if you are 10 years or less away from your date of graduation (from undergrad OR grad school), put this category first. List your earned degrees in descending chronological order. Do NOT include high school if you subsequently earned an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.

Certifications: list every license you hold, certification you have in descending chronological order. Give the certification name/number, year, granting institution

Experience: Again, in descending chronological order, list your recent jobs that are most relevant for the job market where you want to be hired. Give your Job title, employing institution, and years of employment. You can list a few bulleted data points under each job. BE Specific! Resumes are a GREAT place to list quantitative data. Instead of saying: “supervised staff and managed budgets” state: Supervised 2 direct reports with total team size of 7. Budgetary oversight of 600K annual operating.

Previous [or] Related Experience: This category is important to include if you are changing fields or careers (or have recently changed careers). Same rules apply: descending chronological order, give specific data points below the job title as relevant

Skills: specify each category (ie Software suites; Technology systems; Programming/Coding; Languages spoken; medical specializations. etc)

Professional Memberships: When listing these, using abbreviations is fine, but do make sure to spell out the full title for those who may be outside your field of specialization. i.e.: Member, College Art Association (CAA) 2019-present

Volunteerism/Service/Community Engagement: list it! give your title/role, the name of the organization where you serve(d), years you contributed. A brief bulleted description is fine if it would not be obvious from your title (i.e.: “Volunteer”) what you were doing.

CV – the full retrospective

This option is usually for careerists – think academics, doctors, lawyers, published authors, those in senior leadership roles, C-Suite executives, etc – where having a track record of everything you’ve ever done professionally is important. This includes everything that is on your Resume AND everything you left off of that abridged version. For help with your CV, you need to be clear about the industry you are in, the specific credentials required, and the type of position/promotion you are seeking. This is best done in an individualized setting as these get complicated quickly. Feel free to contact me for assistance.