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A résumé is a professional summary of your relevant experience to the job you are applying. It should be brief, concise, and include the following information:
Your résumé is the first thing that an employer sees, so it needs to leave a good impression. Be sure that it is completely free of errors, including misspellings, typos, or poor grammar.
The contact information section should include:
Optionally, you can include a permanent address, a link to your LinkedIn page or professional website/online portfolio, a second phone number, etc.
Your email address should be some variation on your name, not your personal "treehugger1846047" one. Use an account that's specific to you rather than a shared family account. In more technical fields, Gmail accounts or those from your ISP or a personal mail server, are often viewed as indicative of tech-savvy, compared to Yahoo or AOL addresses.
The previous employment section should include:
Be specific in your list of job responsibilities. If you led a team, how many people were on it? If you increased sales, by how much? Providing concrete details is crucial.
Organize your duties/accomplishments by significance and relevance to the position you're applying for. For a supervisor position you are applying for, if you did manage multiple people, that should go higher than troubleshooting day-to-day tech issues.
The education section should include:
Your high school should be included only if you have not attended college. As you develop more relevant career experience, your Education section will become less important and therefore should appear farther down your resume.
The skills and awards section highlights special skills relevant to the job you are applying to, which may include:
Pay attention to the skills required or preferred in the job description, and make sure you're matching your resume skills to what's being sought by the employer.
Most jobs will request three or more professional references.
Use references who are professional, not personal. Interviewers prefer to hear an evaluation of your work performance, not your skills as a friend.
Some great references are:
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