Reading between the lines of writing a good resumé

Many of us are (or should be) looking for careers as graduation nears, others are looking for internships and still others just need a part-time job to earn some extra beer money. While you can rely on your rugged good looks to make it through the job interview, you still need something before you can get to the interview phase. That something else is this week’s word: resumé.

For our benefit, Cal Poly Career Services has been gracious enough to provide us with some resumé guidelines. Let’s examine them:

– “Brief and easy to read.” You can pretty much stop here, all the other rules just elaborate on this one. But since the class you are reading this in is only half way over, you might as well keep reading.

– “Concise action phrases rather than complete sentences.” For years, our teachers have been training us to write in complete sentences, but it turns out that complete sentences are only needed for school. In the real world, no one wants to waste their time reading an entire sentence; they just want the easily digestible bits and pieces of your thoughts.

– “For scanned resumés, use keywords; be specific in naming skills; avoid lines, graphics, columns and italic type.” For non-scanned resumes, there should be so many lines, graphics, columns and italic type, that your resume appears to be partying like it’s 1999.

-“Avoid use of personal pronouns.” This goes for all your writing.

– “Well-organized headings and presentation that encourage the reader’s attention.” Of course, if you really want to get their attention, include a Xerox of your rear end.

– “Boldface type, italic type or capitalization used very selectively to highlight important parts of your resume (e.g. your name, major, position titles).” So basically rotate your use of the above three. One line bold, the next italic, the next in Tile Case.

– “Remember that what you highlight is what you especially want an employer to read; don’t overdo a good thing. Too much highlighting can be confusing.” Unless you use a range of fun colors to highlight, then it is just exciting!

-“Balanced use of blank space and margins.” So what you want to do is cut your resumé into tiny pieces and separate those with text and those without. Then, weigh the two groups on a scale to make sure they are even.

– “Rough draft critiqued by a Career Counselor or other knowledgeable person. Resumé must be perfect with no spelling, typing or grammatical errors.” I feel the phrase “knowledgeable person” needs a little more explanation. Do roommates qualify? What about that drunk guy crashing on your couch?

– “One (preferably) or two pages. Use a laser printer for quality results. Dot matrix not acceptable. Print on one side only.” If your employment history is as long as mine, you might have to get creative to get your resume down to two pages. Try a size four font and put as much information on one line as possible. You can also put the years you worked somewhere instead of the exact months and days. Along with making your resumé more concise, this makes it look like you lasted a reasonable amount of time at that horrible job you quit after one month.

– “Duplicate at a printer or professional copy center. Select good quality 8 1/2 x 11 paper in off-white, beige, gray or other business-like color.” Business-like color? More like boring-like color. Personally, I feel a fun neon color would set you apart and make you stand out.

– Anyway, I hope that this has inspired you to create or update your resumé. If not, well, at least it provided some entertainment to help you make it through your Friday class.

Marci Palla is a public policy graduate student and the Mustang Daily’s new humor columnist. “Marci’s Word of the Week” appears on Fridays and will explore some of the more important venacular of college life, one word at a time.