Stan Bing's Tips for Resume Writing

Dear Stanley,

I was laid off last week. Now I have to go looking for a job, and I don't have the faintest idea how to do a resume. Can you give me a few pointers?

Job Seeker

Dear Seeker,

There is no right and wrong way to do a resume, no matter what the stupid books tell you. Not to say you shouldn't get one of them, just to see how they do their indents and boldfaces and stuff like that. But rules? Not really.

There are, however, a variety of methods to employ -- and a variety of opinions about them. Here's what I like the best when I'm evaluating a candidate:

Tell me your name. Put it at the top, centered, along with your email and phone number.

Skip the goals. Sorry, I don't really care what your personal goals are. I despise resumes that begin with a master paragraph that says something like, "To be a superb communicator and support player in the Flute Reamer Department of a major multi-national corporation." Hate it. Skip it. That's my opinion.

Show your experience. Enumerate all the jobs you have had in reverse order. If you've had one job for fifteen years, that's fine. In fact, that's terrific. List all the promotions you've had over the years, so I can see that you started as a can opener and are now a hoop stringer. Good for you! A typical entry would look like this:

Vice President, Cereal Munching, Crass Industries, Des Plains, IL (1998 - 2006): Managed a department of 15 that oversaw the production, marketing and customer consumption of all roughage for this $214 billion food processing enterprise; interfaced with the Board of Directors about all fiber-related issues; reported directly to the CEO on related matters.

Not like this:

Vice President, Crass Industries (1998-2006): Played an essential role in every aspect of company operations for this enormous and very successful cereal manufacturer; worked with the CEO to direct the entire enterprise, supervised all wellness and green initiatives.

That tells me nothing about your real duties, you see? And that's really all I want to know. Where you've been. What you've done. How long you've stayed there.

Be honest. If you lie you will be found out. And be terse. There's no shame in having the thing be one page long. And don't tell me about your hobbies. I'm not interested, I'm sorry. I would like to know if you speak another language, though. And finally, unless you want to be an assistant, don't let me know how awesome your skills in PowerPoint and Word might be. All the really successful people have other people do that kind of stuff. Don't you want to be one of them?