Final Editing and Polishing Your Resume
After you get all your information down on paper, go through and decide which experiences are directly related to your objective, which are definitely not related, and which are questionable. The questionable information can be used only if there is room. Otherwise, stick with the directly related experiences.
Remember the following:
- Resumes may have to be rewritten many times before they represent your potential.
- Don't worry about complete sentences. Incomplete sentences are acceptable. Make sure your ideas are communicated clearly.
- Double-check resume for misspellings, punctuation, accuracy and grammar.
- Check consistency of your formatting techniques. Make the resume balanced (centered), so it is easy to read and has an even margin around the text.
- Use capital letters, bullets, underlining, italicizing, bold letters, and/or indentation to signal new categories or to separate items in lists. Be cautious. Overemphasizing may be distracting to the reader.
- Do not use slang, jargon or abbreviations.
- If possible, keep the resume to one page. Ask yourself: Does it need to be lengthened or shortened? Only use a two page resume if you have enough text to completely fill the second page. Do not submit a one and 1/2 page or a one and 1/3 page resume. Put your name on the second page of the resume.
- Experiment with captions, headlines, and category titles. Make your resume (format and content) unique...one that will stand out.
- Review text arrangement for readability.
- Print final resume on a laser printer (printers are available in the Creighton Career Center).
- Use bonded non-erasable, white or off white paper with black ink. Print should be dark and clear.
- Some employers scan resumes into their databases. Scanned resumes should be on unfolded, light colored paper with no italicized, underlined or shadowed words.