Daiva Kuncaite
CEP 121
Prof. Larry Trager
02/28/09
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How to Write an Effective Resume?
It is very important to know how to write an effective resume since it is a marketing tool
of the employee. The final goal of the resume is to impress the prospective employer and be
considered for the interview. In today’s economy where the job market has reached the highest
downfall the employers receive thousands of resumes on a daily basis. How can you make an
impression? Here are some of the tips which can make the resume look unique.
The most important information that should be mentioned is our personal data consisting
of name, contact information like address, phone number and email. Even if you have a good
resume if the prospective employer will not be able to contact you then it is not an effective
medium to get you an interview or a job. It is also a good idea to put your name in bold so that it
will stand out from the contact information.
After the contact information we can put our objectives or a personal statement which is
an opening line for the resume. It is advisable to put a professional statement only when you
have many years of experience in one particular field. In other cases it is better to put an
objective stating your employment goal, for example, “A Manager’s position at the restaurant”.
It is also a good idea to include in the objective what you can offer for the new position like “A
Manager’s position at the restaurant that allows me to utilize my analytic skills”. However, you
should avoid objectives that are not concrete, for example “A challenging position that allows
me to utilize my knowledge and experience”.
Education and experience follows the objectives in a resume. In the absence of relative
job experience for the position applied it is better to put education first by listing of relevant
Daiva Kuncaite
CEP 121
Prof. Larry Trager
02/28/09
2
educational degrees, accomplishments, certificates and courses. The order of the information
should be in a descending order starting with the current followed by the older accomplishments.
The year of the completion of any school or a degree should be mentioned on the left side of the
page since it is more noticeable by the reader. Inclusion of the higher GPA score if it is relevant,
or listing of courses with excellent grades related to the position applied can make a good impact
on the employer about your knowledge of the material studied.
In the section of experience you have to list only job experiences which are related to
your applying position. For example, if you apply for teacher’s job in a school you don’t have to
include your experience as a cashier in the supermarket. The most important thing is to list the
duties in the form of Problem-Activity-Response. Your accomplishments give the significance in
your job experience. For example instead of saying that your duty was to sell wine in the
restaurant you can write that you created a technique to promote wines to the guest tables that
increased wine sales of the team about 15 %. In fact the prospective employer will never come to
know if the sale really got increased, but it looks good on your resume. It is wise to use action
verbs in pointing your accomplishments, for example, improved, increased, convinced,
introduced, invented, created, achieved, etc.
In the last part called Skills/Honor/Other, you can introduce all other information that
didn’t fit in the other segment of the resume like volunteer work, awards and special skills like
bilingual, computer literacy and typing speed. In fact, most of the resumes get screened and here
is the place to put some “buzz” words that will catch attention, for example like punctual,
analytical and so on. Nowadays the employers prefer to hire people who multi-task and these
skills can help you stand out from the crowd.
Daiva Kuncaite
CEP 121
Prof. Larry Trager
02/28/09
The resume should convey to the employer that your education, experience, and
capabilities would be an asset and hence enhance the productivity of the company. In
conclusion, a resume is an advertisement of who you are, and the more eye-catching it is, the
more chances that the employer would pick up the phone and call you for an interview.
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