5 Essential Elements in a Resume

Whether you are writing a resume for a job, volunteer, or school application it's a daunting task ahead of you. You've probably procrastinated this long enough confused of how you should write a resume. Although resumes vary in their purposes and template, you should always remember these few essential elements in your resume:contact information, mission/objective statement, accomplishments, education experience, and most importantly you should review your resume before submission.

Contact Information:
Whenever you are writing a resume it is important to always include correct contact information ensuring that it is valid and up to date so your potential employer may contact you. It is vital you check your resume before submitting, confirming your contact information includes your name, email, phone number and address. You should also verify that all your information is up to date. so often people forget to update their information when they have moved or changed providers especially if they are reusing a previous resume(which they shouldn't) and this often cause a lot of miscommunication between potential employers and employees that could cause them the job.

Objective Statement
Another factor to consider is your mission and objective statement. Your objective statement should be located near the top of your resume which will outline your goals and intentions. Many people keep their objective statement vague but in reality you should be precise and to the point. Employers have to review tons of resume and they are probably looking for a specific position to fill, if you make your objective statement vague there is a possibility that it may end up in the trash.

Accomplishments:
In any resume your accomplishment is a key point to include, a resume should be created to show off yourself so you should include any major events, ability or achievements, previous work accomplishment or anything that would make you stand out above all the other applicants. This should be included regardless of your age or experience. It may be hard to do so if you are just starting out or haven't done much but it's essential. Try to think of anything you have been involved in, I'm sure you can think of something. Even if you're just coming out of school there are many things you can include. I find my brain process better and is able to recall events in silence so give it a try, sit down and go through your life.

Education Experience
You should always include your education whenever you are writing a resume. This includes any courses or schooling you have taken, completed or in process of and your GPA if it's significant. You should present this in order of your most recent to the latter with your most recent schooling or course you have attended listed first. If you've yet to completed a course or graduated you should include the course you are attending and the expected date of graduation.

Reviewing your Resume:
Finally it's time to proof-read your resume, this is a vital part to the process of completing your resume. Make sure that your resume is free of typos and grammar mistakes, check through, edit, check through, edit, check through and edit again. Then when you finally think your resume is to your best ability without any mistakes check through once more and have a friend review it. It is important that you ensure there are no callas mistakes or worse painfully obvious mistakes present on your resume since this indicates a lot about you when reviewers review your application.

Targeting:
Also remember to make your resumes targeted, you shouldn't be reusing resumes for different jobs you may be able to reuse the template but you shouldn't just print out a 100 copies of one resume and hand it to 100 jobs. You should make your resume appeal to the company you are potentially working for with facts and facts alone. Also remember to include previous work experience or anything else that would draw eyes to your resume. I have to stress and remind constantly that a resume is meant to attract your potential employer and make yourself stand out from the rest.

Now remember these tips when you are writing your resume, do some more read up and research. And don't forget to continue following our blog for more posts. And don't forget these are just some of the many elements in a resume. Be sure to include these but don't live by these alone. We may be having a follow up post on this one to cover work experience and a few other elements on include. Also often you can get relatively good resume template on Microsoft Word. To do this when you create a new document select "resume" and choose what applies to you. I'm currently in the process of getting PLR (Private Label Rights) to a book so that I may give loyal readers and followers this additional resource FREE as I encourage additional reading and research. You never know you may find it a blast.

Be sure you tune back to our blog for more on resume and job application help.

And Thanks for Reading.

Drafting Your Resume

You will find that writing your resume will be easier if you sit down and think of why you are working on a resume first. If you don't have a job than the reason for writing your resume is easy, you need to work, but if you currently have a job and are making a weekly paycheck the reason for seeking a new job are often more complex.

Reasons that People Look For a Different Job

The most common reason that people start to look for a new job when they already have one is because they don't like their current situation. They are not getting any pleasure from going to work and the only reason they get out of bed in the morning is so that they will have enough money to pay the bills,

Other people start to look for a different job because they want to grow professionally and they don't feel that their current place of employment allows them to do that.

Some people start looking for another job because they have very definite career goals and their current job is little more than something to do while they looked for something that would put them on the correct career path.

Once you know why you are looking for a different job, you will be able to address those issues when you are drafting your resume.

Why Employers Want Your Employment History

Although a potential employer will want to know how well educated you are, they aren't nearly as interested in your education as they are in your employment history.

The first thing they are going to be looking at is how long have you been employed. They want to know if you are someone who is going to be around for a several years, or if you are someone that will only stick around until a better offer comes around.

In addition to wanting to know how long you routinely hold a job, you should also make sure that you include what your duties were while you were employed by a particular company. For example if you spent five years working as a stable, you should tell them that you taught lessons and managed the barn and kept the books or else the potential employer is going to assume that the only thing you did was clean stalls.

When you are writing your resume make sure you include the contact information of the person who oversaw you. If a potential employer is interested in hiring you they will want to speak to your former employers.

Other Information

In addition to your employment history and a summery of your life, you should also make sure that you include a list of your important life experiences and provide information about your educational background.

How to Draft a Career Objective for Your Resume

One of the things that you should include when you are writing your resume is your career objective. All you career objective is, is a simple statement of what your career goals are. It sounds like something that should be easy to write but most of us find that it is the hardest part of drafting a resume. It is hard to break down your goals and dreams into a few words.

The Length of Your Career Objective

Most career experts say that your career objective should be fairly short, no longer than two sentences long. It should be very simple and easy for a potential employer to read.

What It Should Say

Obviously everyone's career objective is going to be unique to them. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't a standard formula you should try to adhere to. The best career objectives are personal, not generic. They should be warm and friendly, you want to think of your career statement as your resumes opening statement, it's an introduction to yourself. When you are drafting your career statement you want to give the person who is reading your resume the sense that you are very committed to your goal. You need to really believe in what you are saying; if you don't believe it, how is a person who has never met you going to take you seriously?

When you are drafting your career objective it is really important that you are very specific. There are two reasons that you need to be specific. The first reason is so that your career objective doesn't sound generic. The second reason is so that the person who is reading your resume knows what you are actually applying for and that you didn't just turn in a form resume.

What You Shouldn't Write

There are a few things that you shouldn't put in your career objectives. You should not say that your objective is to get the job, the person reading your resume already knows that you would like the job or else you wouldn't have turned in your resume. You also shouldn't write that your ultimate goal is to run the company, prospective employers like to hire forward thinkers but they seldom hire people to fill their shoes.

After you have finished writing your career objective have another person read what you wrote. Have them pretend that they have never met you and ask what impression they would make based solely on your career objective.