Information about the ideal length of resumes for new college graduates is ambiguous. Many recruiters state that resumes should be no longer than one page, but two-page resumes typically present the applicant in a better light and usually result in more invitations to interview. Whether you elect to use one or two pages, use all the space available. A one-and-a-half page resume looks badly planned. If the information you really need to include results in one and a half pages, use one or more of the optional entries to expand to fill the second page.

To complicate matters, in recent years organizations have been scanning resumes and using optical character recognition (OCR) software to convert them into digital form to be “read” by a computer. The computer then flags those resumes that include key words indicating special job skills. Other organizations may prefer you to complete an online resume using special “resume builder” software. For instructions on completing online and other scannable resumes see ResumeBuilder by Resumix, which is designed to produce scannable resumes.

To see a variety of examples of how—and how many—organizations are using resume builder software, use any of the standard search engines on the web (such as Google) and use the search term, “resume builder.”

When you prepare your resume, you will need to assume that at least some of the organizations where you might like to work will do their first screening of applicants entirely by computer, based either on an online form or on scanning your resume using OCR software. Your resume may well be read by a human only if the computer finds the appropriate key words and flags your application for further consideration.

Another significant change brought about by computer technology and the Internet is the electronic portfolio. An electronic portfolio includes not only a resume, but also a variety of documents that support an individual’s claim to have certain qualifications. Those doing the recruiting for organizations appreciate electronic portfolios because they provide a more comprehensive view of an applicant’s qualifications before he or she is invited to an interview.

If you are claiming “excellent communication skills,” you would include links in your resume to documents that would support that claim. If you are claiming fluency in a foreign language, you could support that with links to documents written in that language. The electronic portfolio allows you to illustrate your areas of expertise.

Your electronic portfolio should include documents in HTML and PDF formats only, however, as most Internet users are reluctant to open formatted documents in other formats (especially Microsoft Word and Excel) because of the possibility of embedded viruses in such documents. Also, those who desire and review electronic portfolios have increasing expectations for quality. Take full advantage of the Web’s ability to display well-designed documents using both color and appropriate graphics. Remember that those who view your resume online will probably view the rest of your portfolio, so everything in your portfolio should be appropriate for the professional image you wish to convey.

Personal Details

Your name, address, and phone number (including the area code) should be listed first. If you have an email address (other than that for a temporary class account) list it as well. If you have your resume online, list the URL (the document’s address on the Web). If you have a school address that you will be using for a time before returning to your parents’ home or otherwise moving, you may list more than one address, specifying the date when the change will take place: “Address until July 1, 1998”; “After July 1, 1998:”

Because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating against job applicants because of age, sex, race, or place of national origin, employers may disqualify applicants whose resumes include this information unless such personal details may be part of the qualifications for a job (such as vision and medical condition for pilots).

Education

Unless you have four or more years of full-time experience in the kind of work for which you are applying, education will probably be your most important division and your main sales point. It deserves a major heading and several subheadings. Some categories you might use are schools attended (listed in reverse chronological order), honors earned, grade-point average (if noteworthy), major and minor areas of study, and special projects. If you are graduating with honors (especially magna or summa cum laude), be sure to include that information.

If you earned at least part of your college expenses, be sure to say so. Working your way through school demonstrates your willingness to work. Remember that course numbers (MKTG 437) will have no meaning to your readers. Use course titles instead: Direct-Mail Advertising.

Give special emphasis to those courses that make you exceptionally well-qualified for the kind of work you are seeking. All accounting majors, for example, take introductory accounting wherever they go to school and whatever the specific title of the course may be. Focus instead on the upper-division work that indicates the range and depth of your educational background. Give special emphasis to internships, independent studies, and other courses that help make you unique.

Experience

When possible, emphasize job-related experience. Even if none of your working experience is job-related, however, showing that you have worked is important. Be sure to state where and when you worked and what you did. List your job duties in a way that will have meaning for the reader, but avoid stating the obvious: If you worked as a server in a restaurant, for example, you do not need to say that you took orders, carried food to tables, and so forth. Focus instead on special responsibilities, such as opening or closing the restaurant, training or supervising new servers, managing a section, and so on.

If the work was part-time while you were attending school, say so. Full-time summer work should be listed as such. Prospective employers typically like to see your reasons for having left previous jobs. Use reverse chronological order in listing your work experience, with the most recent work being listed first. Be sure to indicate where and when you earned promotions.

References

New college graduates are generally better off if they list their references on their resumes. More than 70 percent of those who regularly review applications state that they prefer to have references listed on the resume, and while most employers will give serious consideration to applications without references, some (about 20 percent) consider it presumptuous to be told that they must ask for them if they want them. Listing references will give you at least a slight edge when competing with other applicants, and, for some jobs, it may be a deciding factor.

If you are already working at a job and do not want your current employer to know that you are seeking other employment, then you would do well to say that you will furnish references on request to ensure that your current employer is not surprised by a telephone call requesting information about your work habits.

Be sure to obtain each person’s permission before listing him or her as a reference—no one likes to be taken by surprise. Also, you may discover that your reference’s opinion of you is not what you thought it was, and it would be good to know that before you actually list him or her on your resume.

In listing your references, give the person’s courtesy title (Mr., Ms., or Dr.); full name; professional title (Director of Personnel, Office Manager, Professor, etc.); business mailing address; business telephone number; and, if it is not otherwise clear, the person’s connection to you. In some cases, the person’s title will make the connection clear: Dr. Harvey Hallister, Professor, Department of Accountancy, University of Higher Learning would be sufficient to suggest that Dr. Hallister was your professor. If he were also the director of your senior independent study, you should add that detail.

Your professors and your employers will make the best references. Personal references (including friends, relatives, church leaders, family physicians, and neighbors) usually cannot provide employers the information they seek and should not be listed on a resume. College students should anticipate the need for references before the date of graduation approaches. Even if you are an excellent student, your professors need to be able to say more about you than “So and So was in my class and earned an A.” To provide useful information about you, your professors will need to know something about you as a person.

When possible, take two or three classes from professors you would like to have served as references so that they will be able to comment on your performance over time. Independent studies and special projects requiring effective time management, initiative, and perseverance are especially helpful in providing professors with the kind of detail employers like to see. When asking instructors for a reference, provide them with a brief description of the job you are seeking and a summary of your experiences in their classes. Provide the details of any special projects you completed for them.

• Professional Objective (or Job Objective). One of the traditional entries on resumes has been a brief statement of the applicant’s professional or job objective. Some employers still like to see such a line because it affords them a quick and easy way to eliminate candidates whose objective does not match the job available. For this reason and because job objective entries tend to sound self-serving, in recent years the Qualified By statement has become increasingly common.

  Professional Objective: Sales representative for a high-tech firm offering an opportunity to advance into marketing management.

• Qualified By Statement. A Qualified By statement provides a brief summary of a candidate’s principal qualifications for work in a particular field early in the resume.

  Qualified By: A thorough education in all aspects of marketing and business communication combined with an excellent background in general business and more than four years of part-time work, including a retail internship with Marshall Field and Company and a marketing research internship for Ford Motor Credit.

  
  

• Key Terms. With the advent of scannable resumes, it has become essential to include key words for the kind of employment you seek. The best way to ensure that you include a complete list of such terms is to include a specific entry on your resume for doing so. To be able to do so, you will, of course, need to know the key terms for the kind of work you are seeking. Key terms are more often nouns (UNIX, networking, Windows NT) and noun phrases (operating systems, Total Quality Management, marketing management) than they are to be action verbs of the sort human readers prefer (developed, coordinated, supervised, completed).

  Key Terms

  Computer Skills: Word, WordPerfect, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, SPSSx, Windows 95, Windows NT
  Communication Skills: Writing, editing, letters, memos, reports, electronic mail (e-mail, email), electronic conferencing, video, video conferencing, sales presentations
  Experience: Office manager, software consultant, office systems specialist, supervisor, network administrator

• Honors, Awards, and Special Recognition. Emphasize scholastic achievement and awards that indicate leadership, perseverance, and other outstanding personal qualities. If a volunteer organization cited your efforts on its behalf, for example, you may wish to mention that accomplishment. Indicate when you received the honor or award, and use its correct title.

  Honors and Awards: Dean’s List (8 semesters), Murco Academic Scholarship (1997 and 1998), Best Story Award (for“Campus Parking Problems,”Daily Student, March 15, 1998, p. A1)

• Military Service. If you have military experience, you should list it. Explain your duties and responsibilities but avoid military jargon (few civilians would understand MOS 71H20 (a designation for a Military Occupational Specialty in the personnel/clerical area). Stress supervisory experience and the civilian equivalent of military skills.

  Military Service: June 1995 to June 1997

  Computer Specialist (E5), United States Army. Responsible for maintaining a local network of 20 computers and supervising two network specialists. Installed software and software updates. Provided training in software applications to officers and enlisted personnel. Honorable discharge in June 1997.

• Publications. If you have published (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or technical manuals) something of consequence, say so. (Do not include letters to the editor of newspapers or magazines.) Most organizations value writing skills and appreciate the effort it takes to write for publication.

  Publication: “The Future of Direct-Mail Advertising,” Marketing Monthly, January 20xx, pp. 15-32.

• Organizations and Offices Held. Most organizations prefer to hire applicants with leadership skills. Both elected and appointed leadership positions can indicate your potential for promotion. Professional and preprofessional organizations are typically given more weight than social fraternities or sororities, but memberships in social groups can help demonstrate social skills and potential for leadership. Emphasize projects and activities that show your leadership and organizational skills.

  Organizations and Offices Held: Pre-Law Society, President (20xx), First Vice President (20xx), Secretary (20xx); Marketing Club; and Alpha Kappa Psi.

• Special Qualifications and Licenses. Do you have any special qualifications that might cause an organization to take a special interest in you, such as certification in Windows NT? Most undergraduate students do not have the opportunity to obtain such special qualifications, so those with them stand out from the crowd. Having your private pilot’s license, for example, demonstrates your initiative and perseverance.

• Activities, Hobbies, Travel, and Special Interests. Participation in sports, hobbies that require special skills, domestic and foreign travel, and interests in reading or music can help demonstrate a well-rounded personality. Avoid mentioning dangerous hobbies (sky diving, motorcycle ice racing, extreme sports, and the like) unless the job for which you are applying will require a similar sense of adventure. In general, items in this category should be considered “filler.” If you need another few lines of material to complete a second page, you may include items in this category, but if you have ample material that applies more directly to the job you are seeking, concentrate on it.

• Date of Preparation. It is usually a good idea to include the month and year a resume was prepared. Doing so encourages you to update your resume with regularity and ensures readers that the information is current.

Even in those fields requiring creativity and innovation, fairly conservative resumes usually prove more successful than the bizarre. Unusual layouts and nonstandard paper sizes and shapes, for example, force a reader to spend more time locating information than he or she normally would. In some circumstances this might work for you; more often, however, it does not because the reader is in a hurry to reduce a stack of 100 or so resumes to the 10 he or she considers worthy of serious consideration. Before you innovate, analyze your audience. What will appeal to the type of person who will read your resume? Avoid giving your reader an excuse to reject your resume at first glance.

People skim resumes rather than read them. Arrange your material so that a reader will be able to spot your most important skills in two or three minutes. Neatness counts. So does readability. Major headings should stand out. Dates and other numbers should be placed where they are visible but so that they do not interfere with more important information. Emphasize skills that show your flexibility, such as communication (both written and oral skills) and computer applications.

Use space carefully. As mentioned previously, arrange your material so that it will cover all of one page or all of two pages. Blank space on a resume has negative implications. Until such time as your career advancement requires a fully developed vita, avoid going over two pages. Never include or send a photograph unless the job requires one.

Use a standard 12-point, serif typeface (Times or Palatino) and a high-quality printer. Serif fonts are warmer and easier for humans to read than sans serif fonts. If you are preparing separate resumes for scanning and human review, use a standard sans serif font (Arial or Helvetica) for scanning and the serif typeface for the human reader. OCR software may find the sans serif typeface easier to interpret. Also, avoid horizontal and vertical rules (lines), which can confuse OCR software. OCR software may also have difficulty with italics, underscored print, and multicolumn presentations, so avoid them as well.

Not this: I developed a new procedure for ensuring quality.
But this: Developed a new procedure for ensuring quality.

Avoid negative words. Should you need to explain lack of experience or some other obvious lack of qualification, do so in the letter of application. The resume should be entirely positive, emphasizing your best qualifications.

The functional resume is useful for subordinating periods of unemployment, and people who have been out of the work force for a while or who have changed jobs many times may prefer to use a functional resume. Be aware, however, that reviewers of resumes often call functional resumes “the unemployed person’s resume.”

For this reason, use a chronological resume if possible. If you have periods of unemployment, try to be creative in the way you present the information. If you changed jobs frequently, consider combining those jobs into a single entry, stating that you worked a variety of jobs to earn money to finance your college education. If you think that you must use a functional resume, be sure to make your principal job skills highly visible and be prepared to account for the chronology of your work history during the interview. Remember also that you will probably be required to complete a job application form, which will demand a chronological listing of your previous jobs and dates of employment.

The following table presents the organizational pattern for each type of resume:

	Functional	Chronological
1	Name	Name
2	Address, phone, email, web address.	Address, phone, email, web address
3	Job objective, qualified by, or key terms	Job objective, qualified by, or key terms
4	Important Job Skill 1 (for example, client-server applications development)	Education (or experience) by dates in reverse chronological order
5	Important Job Skill 2 (for example, network administration)	Experience (or education) by dates in reverse chronological order
6	Important Job Skill 3 (for example, computer applications training and help desk)	Optional entries
7	Additional job skills or personal qualities	Additional optional entries
8	References	References

the first sample resume, which illustrates a traditional format designed to appeal to human readers. The second example illustrates a scannable resume that will also appeal to human readers. (Note: the appearance of these resumes will be influenced by the browser you are using and its settings.)

Once you have prepared your resume, your next step is to write the accompanying letter of application. Regardless of how you produce your resume, each application letter should be individually prepared for a particular audience. It should employ the same principles as other letters, so you may wish to review previous sections with special attention to positive tone, you-attitude, and persuasion.

Because employers usually receive a great number—sometimes hundreds—of applications for each available job, how your letter looks will make a big difference in the attention it receives. The initial perception of you by the people who receive your job letter will be created by the image you present on paper. Before they invite you to the interview, prospective employers will have concluded from your letter and resume whether you are neat, courteous, well-organized, confident, and competent.

Because letters about jobs are personal letters, never use your school’s letterhead or the letterhead of your current employer. A printed personal letterhead is acceptable but not necessary. Prepare employment correspondence on high quality paper (20-pound stock in white or off-white). Use block format, and place your return address, including your phone number, approximately 1 to 1.5 inches (7 to 9 line spaces) from the top of the page on the left margin. The phone number is helpful in case the letter and resume become separated. Your name, which appears in the signature block, is not part of your return address.

All employers want employees who have demonstrated a willingness to work, the skills required to perform required tasks, the ability to get along well with others, and sufficient potential to merit promotion. Letters of application succeed to the degree that they demonstrate that their writers possess these qualities. To demonstrate these qualities in your letter, you will need to have analyzed your strengths and weaknesses for the kind of work for which you are applying and the specific job requirements. You will also need to be specific about the work you are prepared to do and use the appropriate language to be convincing.

The best letters demonstrate knowledge of the reader’s organization (recent growth, acquisitions, mergers, new products, innovative services, and so on). Do your homework, and learn all you can about an organization before writing. Except in unusual circumstances, a letter of application should be no longer than one page.

Just as a sales letter is either solicited or unsolicited (see Understanding Persuasion), a letter of application is either invited or uninvited, depending on whether the reader expects—or desires—to receive it. Whether your letter of application is invited or uninvited, you need to give careful consideration to what your reader already knows and expects and to what your reader (and your reader’s organization) needs. Because the main objective of the letter of application is to persuade the reader to act in a certain way, it follows the basic organizational pattern for persuasive messages:

1. Pace. Place the message in its appropriate communication context right away by telling the reader that you are applying for a job. When possible, subordinate that information to something of greater reader interest, such as a benefit. Invited letters of application should mention the source of the invitation: newspaper or journal ad, mutual friend, special invitation, or campus recruiter. Uninvited applications should mention a way in which you can help the reader’s organization achieve certain objectives.

2. Lead. Show what you know about the reader’s organization. Show your reader how you would fit into the organization’s structure and that you understand the special language of the job you are seeking. Provide a transition to the next step by introducing your education and experience.

3. Blend Outcomes. Use your education, experience, and personal qualities to show your reader that you can fill specific job requirements. Avoid lecturing your reader (You need a person who...) and concentrate on showing your reader that you are qualified (Because I am a person who...I could make a valuable contribution to...).

   Because you will be using a resume as an informative enclosure, select and amplify those aspects of your background most appropriate for the company addressed. In invited applications be sure to say something about each of the job requirements listed in the ad or other information source. In uninvited letters, say something about each job requirement you assume will apply to the work you are seeking. Omit negative factors your reader would have no way of knowing about, and subordinate any negative information that must be included.

4. Motivate. The business objective of the letter of application is to secure an interview. Avoid the temptation of asking for a job; ask for an interview instead. Keep in mind that your reader is not obligated to see you. If a specific time or day would be convenient for you, suggest it for the interview. Do not, however, imply that the reader must accept your suggestion. Invite the reader to suggest alternatives.

As with all sales letters, you must catch your reader’s attention to succeed. Use an oversized envelope so that your application will be unfolded. This is especially important if you think that your resume may be scanned. Fold lines may interfere with proper scanning. Avoid tricks and gimmicks. A neat, professional appearance and solid content should be sufficient to give you an edge.

In general, use the words job and work. The words vacancy and opportunity suggest that either you do not care what you do or that you are concerned only about what the organization can do for you. The word position also has special connotations—it implies relatively high status in an organization. The person to whom you are writing may expect you to start with a job and work your way up to a position.

The sample letter of application illustrates most of the previous points.