Resume checklist!

Before you submit your resume online, here is a quick checklist of things you should check:

Does it have a clean and consistent format?
1. Clean: consider a sans-serif font.
2. Balanced: right align dates
3. Consistency: Are your dates all in the same format? Or do you have March, Jan, Sept? I prefer the 3-letter abbreviation though as long as you’re consistent, I’m not that fussed. This also means dates for your work experience and education. All dates should be consistent!
4. Contact information: is your name clear and more prominent? Is your email there? Your phone number? LinkedIn? Address is optional.
5. Spelling and grammar: did you get someone else to proofread it? If you think one spelling/grammar mistake is one little thing, think again. A resume should represent your best work. And if you have mistakes in your resume, what would a potential employer think would be in your work products if you started on Monday?
6. Are all past experiences in past tense and all current experiences in present tense?
7. Format consistency: are all the bullets aligned? The same? Titles and headers formatted the same?
8. So all bullets start with a verb? Not necessarily mandatory and helps with consistency
9. All of this is important as any misses here might kick you out of the process based on a “technicality”
Did you reverse engineer the job posting?
1. Make it very easy for the recruiter to find the responsibilities and qualifications they are looking for.
2. Is the most relevant information first? If you can manage to order them the same way, that’s great. Make sure to use similar words. And make sure NOT to use the entire bullet (make sure to make it your own).
3. Highlight the 3 or more keywords on each bullet/requirement on the job description. Do a search/find for those words. If you can’t find them, then THE RECRUITER MAY NOT BE ABLE TO EITHER. Go back and make updates.
4. Reverse engineering is probably the most important part of the checklist!!!
Did you upgrade your activities to achievements?
1. Quantifying what you’ve done can elevate your resume. Increasing revenue is ok. Increasing revenue by 6% is good. Increasing revenue by 27% is better.
2. For small numbers (less than 1,000) consider adding relative percentages. So if you saved your student club $750 off a budget of $7500 then you saved 10%. And if they gave you $6MM then the correlation would be that you could save them $600k. Vs just being able to save just $750. At least that’s the hope.
3. NOTE: Not all bullets need to be achievements, though the more that are, the more that can be differentiated from the other resumes out there. Keep in mind that most people that apply will have done everything in the posting. Not all of them would have demonstrated they do it WELL!