Zen and the Art of “Resume Writing”
by Daniel Da Emi
So you are looking for a job. Perhaps you feel the whirlwind of downsizing hitting you soon, or you’ve already been hit!!! Maybe your desk chair has caved into the shape of your body, and you feel it is time to find yourself a new set of desk and chair, or perhaps you are a first-time job seeker venturing into the world of business. Wherever you are in your personal journey, getting that ever-elusive job interview appointment means a bulletproof resume, one that is sharp, attractive, and all-around eye-catching!
The optimistic go-getter in you is not worried too much since Good Ol’ Google has plenty of resumes in store. All you need to do is take one that fits your purpose and is “YOU,” so to speak, change the name and address, and move a couple of paragraphs, or better yet, jump on the AI bandwagon and have AI write you one and Voila! You have yourself a kick-ass resume, right? ….. Wrong!
The last thing you want to do is to copy your resume from some randomly-googled Joe Blow or AI it and expect to impress a potential employer. I have seen my share of odd-looking resumes, from, let’s say, “special” to downright “creepy” ones, and I can tell you that copied resumes with no thought put in them scream “Fake.”
A good resume has a coherent body and a genuine soul. When you think of a good resume, think Zen. It is a balanced combination of Simplicity, Asymmetry, and Originality—the ingredients of a show-stopper piece!
Here are some essential tips to help you get your Zen on!
1. A professional email address: There was a time not too long ago when you had to pay for an email account. Thankfully, those days are far behind. Now you can get one for free, so get yourself one with your first and last name as the handle and leave the more creative ones like eurogal121@ or wassupG@ to social media sites as well as your BFFs and Homies. And while you are at it, avoid _ (underscore) or – (hyphen) or anything else that makes your email address unnecessarily difficult to remember and to type.
2. Format it: Choose one of the following two most popular and user-friendly formats.
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- Reverse Chronological: from the most recent job experience to the earliest (usually for those with some pertinent experience under their belts).
- Functional: Start with the most recent “Relevant” experience (geared towards chain part-timers et al.)
**Also, while you are at it, make sure you save it in a more recent version of MS Word.
3. Spel-Cheque, please! : Spell check, and I don’t mean leaving it to the kindness of Microsoft Word to do the job for you. Because even though it does a good job, there is still a phenomenon known as homophones (words that have the same sounds but are spelled differently and have different meanings) e.g. “for/four” and the most common and embarrassing flop “there/their”.