Does Your Resume Need Repair? Follow these quick tips to keep your resume polished and presentable!

Amy Soricelli, Director of Alumni Placement

1. Re-read your resume! Change the bullets around. Remove some of the redundant bullets and give your resume some fresh air.
   
2. Does your resume 'pop'? Are there any action words you can use to replace stagnant words? You may want to use actions words, such as: Negotiated, enlisted, mastered, projected, revamped, instructed.
   
3. Does the gap in your resume shout off the page? There is always something to include! For example:
   
   "During this period I was enrolled full-time in an online course for accounting principles; actively involved in the P.T.A.; event planning and management of school-wide events; and sole care-taker for an elderly relative."
   
4. Have you worked with a temporary agency? Did you have five different jobs through one temporary agency? A good rule of thumb is to name the agency and locations worked. For example:
   "February 2009 - Present – ABC Temporary Agency, Anytown New Jersey
   Temporary Administrative and Office Management Positions at prestigious corporations such as Bulova Watches, Pepsico, and Bank of America."
   
5. Make sure your resume is noun-intensive. Many companies use technology to search through your resume for nouns, but they can ignore verbs. You may need to rewrite parts of your resume. For example, you may want to write "Project Manager" instead of "managed projects".
   
6. Keep it simple.  Remove the bells and whistles.  If you have a photograph, a flower in the corner, a 'fun' border, or any kind of graphics or shadings, you may want to remove them to make your resume more professional.
   
7. Keep your resume consistent!  Use either months as numbers (2/08) or  spelled out (February, 2008) but not both.
   
8. If you graduated already, make sure to replace “candidate for" with "degree in.”
   
9. Make sure you include a relevant objective or career summary at the beginning of your resume.  You don't want a recruiter to have to guess to what your career objectives or goals are.
   
10. Review your resume before sending it to a potential employer.  Then review it again.   Ask someone else to review it.  And then someone else.  Murphy’s Law says only the recruiter will find the mistake.