Writing A Resume

By Matt Krumrie, Star Tribune Sales and Marketing

Last update: July 8, 2008 - 3:39 PM

Kevin Donlin of Edina-based Guaranteed Resume (www.gresumes.com) has read nearly 15,000 resumes over the years and found glaring mistakes in about 90 percent of them.

"Most of them could use improvement," says Donlin.

Kyle Krzmarzick, Minneapolis-based area manager for CDI Professional Services (www.cdicorp.com), a company that offers engineering, IT and professional staffing solutions for Fortune 1000 clients, says job seekers need to customize their resume to each job.

If you know you're applying for an outside sales job, bring your relevant experience to the surface, and make it easy to find," says Krzmarzick.

In addition, be descriptive. Use action words to explain what you did. Use sales figures and numbers, and TELL, don't SHOW, the recruiter what you did. Krzmarzick receives many resumes with job seekers boasting about the projects they were a part of, or products they helped develop, but they do not describe what their roles or responsibilities were on those projects. If you took a key role in developing a project/process/product, include what you did and why your role was important.

Another question job seekers ponder is, should the resume be one or two pages? Krzmarzick says it's perfectly acceptable to put together a two-page or even three-page resume.

If you are someone with five-plus years of experience in your field, and you can fit all your experience on one page, that might be a red flag for some employers, says Krzmarzick.

Resume writing is boring, but resumes don't have to be boring. An easy way to eliminate dull wording from a resume is to read it aloud to friends, says Donlin. If eyes glaze over, you've likely lost your audience. Revise the resume until it holds your friends' attention all the way through.

A resume is a fluid document," says Barbara Wulf, a career coach with Orono-based Beckon Call (http://www.beckoncall-coach.com).

"The resume should reflect your professional growth. Continue to update, edit or enhance as you change employers or job titles, and review your resume every six months to update the information while it is fresh in your mind."

Matt Krumrie is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights, MN, and has seven years of experience reporting on the employment industry. The first Sunday of each month this column will answer readers' questions. E-mail questions or subject ideas to askmatt@startribune.com.

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