A Modern Woman's Guide to Power

Create Your Resume

As Dr. Frederick Lenz once said, “Having the competitive edge to be able to succeed is having control of your time, life and mind.” This is no less true when it comes to getting the job you love and deserve. Since your resume is the first point where most companies get to meet and know more about your experience, it only makes sense to make sure this is bulletproof for when you interview.

Below are a few tips you can use to connect the magic of Dr. Lenz’ teachings into your resume preparation:

Search for resume examples online based on the role you want

 

 

  • There are many types of resumes, how are you to choose the best one? One of the many great things about the internet is you can easily search for examples online. Some industries even have very specific formats for what would best support the information you want to convey to your future employer.

 

  • Search for “[Career you want] Resume Example” to find many examples online. You can see how others in your field word their experience and follow a similar structure if your experience matches.

Search LinkedIn for people who have the role you want

  • Read their bios and career experience to see how they present themselves online. When you find people in similar roles, you can also see what skills they highlight and how they present their “career story”, or the way they developed their career.

Create a basic layout

 

 

  • Header – Include your name, the title you want, your phone number and email. Be sure to spell all of these correctly!

 

  • Career Experience – Start by listing out the jobs you held in chronological order, with your most recent role on the top and the oldest ones on the bottom. Be sure to list the company, title and years you worked there.

 

  • Education – List the colleges you attended, the degree you obtained and any professional certifications you achieved. You can add the year you graduated to each of these but its not necessary, and some interviewers can use it to inadvertently calculate your age (this is ageism).

 

  • Volunteer Work (Optional) – If you have volunteer experience, you can add that towards the end. Some employers like to see that you are active in your community, and this experience can add more human dimension to your resume. If you are new to interviewing or are entering a new field, relevant volunteer experience can add more meat your resume.

Edit, Edit, Edit

  • This is a critical step, as misspellings and grammar errors can be a sign of a lack of attention to detail and look unprofessional. Use software like Word’s spell check or Grammarly to make a first pass, and then find a trusted friend to review it. Reading your own resume out loud can also help you capture sentence errors.

Find a friend to review

 

 

  • Once you have your resume together, practice reviewing and knowing it by heart!

 

  • Develop your career story. Interviewers may ask you to give them an overview of your career, so being able to describe where you started and how you advanced to where you are is important. If you make this compelling, it draws the interviewer in and you can even leverage this into talking about how the role you are interviewing for is the next logical step in your career.

Print it and keep it up to date

  • Once you are happy with your resume, format it and print it out on nice, clean, unwrinkled paper. You can even place it in a clear plastic folder to ensure it remains crisp. Having this on hand in case you need to interview on short notice is a good idea if you are actively interviewing.

 

  • Once a quarter or whenever you change jobs, pop open your resume and make those updates. Since the accomplishments you had on the job will be fresh in your mind, it will be a lot easier to update as you go.
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Next: Interview preparation
All quotes reprinted or included here with permission from The Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism.