Resume Clinic’s Bits and Bytes

In the free critiques we perform for our clients, one of the most commonly misused features in client resumes is the bullet point. It seems that many people have been taught to place all of their information into bullet points, while some people neglect to use them at all. The purpose of the bullet point is to draw attention to the important information that will carry the most weight with the reader. What we must remember is that in most cases, your resume has only seconds to impress the reader and an all-bulleted resume has the exact same effect as a no-bullet resume.

Additional tips for maximizing bullet point effect in your resume include:

• Use a .25” tab and indent setting for your bullet points. When the bullet point is too close to the text it loses its visibility, and when it is too far away from the text they appears to float by themselves and serve more as a distraction to the reader.
• Never use more than two types of bullet points in your document. Any more than that and you run the risk of your document being too busy, which is another distraction.
• Watch the size of your bullet points in your resume. Many people tend to use large circular bullet points that visually dominate the text.
• Add spacing between bulleted lines using the paragraph/spacing feature in MS Word.
• If you have few significant accomplishments to highlight and few duties to include, it is okay to use bullet points for the entire job description.
• If you have many significant accomplishments, don’t be afraid to highlight a few of them in your cover letter using bullet points.

When used correctly within your resume, bullet points add the visual cues that draw your reader to the information that will help your candidacy the most.

William Mitchell, CPRW

As I watched the LSU Tigers (from my home state of Louisiana) become the first team to win a 2nd BCS title, I began, as usual to think of the game in terms of resumes and employment. It occurred to me that the participants in this game will have an excellent networking tool at their disposal. Many people will be curious and want to hear the details of such an experience. As such, it’s a great interest generator on a resume and can definitely be the impetus for getting interviews.

Of course, this doesn’t only hold true for national champions. A USC or UCLA athlete in a major sport can definitely draw the interest of hiring managers in the Los Angeles area. I graduated from Xavier in Louisiana and I can remember our basketball players getting some favorable attention since they were ranked nationally in the NAIA. As long as you don’t try use it as the basis of your existence (a la Al Bundy with his four touchdowns in one game), you can definitely draw the interest of companies, especially those looking for recruiting muscle.

If you played one of the popular sports in high school and wonder if continuing your athletic career can be of benefit to you, think twice before giving it up at the college level. It could be your ticket to interviews.

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William Mitchell, Certified Professional Resume Writer
http://www.theresumeclinic.com
- Member of the Better Business Bureau Online Reliability Program
- Gauge your resume’s effectiveness; order a free detailed resume assessment with no commitment necessary.
- Sign up for our monthly newsletter and keep your career tools sharp!
- Get your resume in front of the right people immediately with the Resu-Blast premium resume posting engine.

When a resume writer is deciding whether or not to place resume samples on their website, they are trying to assess whether or not they will be losing business because a potential client decides to use the sample as a guide instead. This has never concerned me because someone intending to loot samples was never going to hire our service anyhow. Our samples exist to demonstrate to the Internet community the quality of work that we can produce.

But what many samples looters usually don’t understand is that they don’t always know what strategy went into deciding the format used. A resume that consistently secures interviews takes many aspects of the job seeker’s personal background and employment goal into account before deciding on layout and content. When a sample is merely duplicated, it is like putting on someone else’s shoes and hoping that one size fits all.

It doesn’t sound like that much of a big deal, but when you consider that you usually need to beat out over 90% of the other applicants before your resume gets to the 2nd round of review, you can see that a “one size fits all” resume can have you in the job market for an awful long time. This translates into thousands of dollars in income lost over that time span.

Doesn’t this make $170-$200 a worthwhile investment?

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William Mitchell, Certified Professional Resume Writer
http://www.theresumeclinic.com
- Member of the Better Business Bureau Online Reliability Program
- Gauge your resume’s effectiveness; order a free detailed resume assessment with no commitment necessary.
- Sign up for our monthly newsletter and keep your career tools sharp!
- Get your resume in front of the right people immediately with the Resu-Blast premium resume posting engine.

Many resume seekers find their resume service of choice because of work samples found online or through a friend who as hired the resume writer in the past. Usually, if the style was exciting and attention-grabbing, the client will indicate that they wish for their resume to look exactly like the one they saw prior to contacting us.

Now, look and feel of the resume and cover letter may be one thing; but data organization and phrasing sophistication is a different ballgame. When you get a resume, these areas really should only be developed with the individual client and goal in mind, and any resume service that can promises you that these items will present a certain way without seeing your information or knowing your goal, is likely not planning to put any time into strategy development of any kind.

A certified professional resume writer will take the time to examine the entire picture before committing to any specific data structure. In fact, since you are now a newly educated client armed with new information, you should insist upon it.

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William Mitchell, Certified Professional Resume Writer
http://www.theresumeclinic.com
- Member of the Better Business Bureau Online Reliability Program
- Gauge your resume’s effectiveness; order a free detailed resume assessment with no commitment necessary.
- Sign up for our monthly newsletter and keep your career tools sharp!
- Get your resume in front of the right people immediately with the Resu-Blast premium resume posting engine.