Résumé Writing Resources

Great resumes highlight your qualifications, making it quick and easy for employers to find what they are looking for. Sell your skills, experiences, and accomplishments, demonstrating you have what employers need for the job. Think about the employers you are targeting and how they will be more successful if they hire you. In order to focus on each employer and their job opening, plan to create multiple versions of your resume.

Use the Format that Fits Your Background

• Functional resumes highlight skills and accomplishments and are generally good for people without a great deal of work experience or with gaps in their work history.
• Chronological resumes outline educational and work experience in a timeline.
• Combination resume skills and experiences and give a brief job history.

Make a Great First Impression

• Provide statements about your accomplishments instead of listing job duties and functions.
• List your strongest skills and qualifications in the first half.
• Provide position titles and places of employment in bold or underlined so they stand out.
• Tailor your resume to the job for which you are applying instead of providing a generic resume.
• List the most important facts first.
• Use a clean and professional layout.
• Edit carefully and have others edit for you so there are no typographical or grammatical errors.
• Keep it to one page!

Use Action Verbs

As you draft your resume, make sure to begin descriptions of your work activities with an action verb, add relevant details of activities, then describe what you achieved. A few examples are listed on the "Action Verbs" page found in the Related Resources below.

Things to Leave Out of Your Resume

• Don't include the date, leave that in the cover letter.
• Avoid using the pronoun "I".
• Don't use abbreviations, technical terms, or military terms employers may not understand.
• Don't include race, religion, political affiliation, age, weight, sex, height, health information, marital status, number of children, hobbies, test scores, sports interests, faith-based affiliations, family background, home ownership, social security number, or geographic preference.

Have A Professional Review Your Resume

Take one of the resume workshops offered at Missouri Job Centers around the state and get one-on-one assistance.  Experienced workforce specialists are available at your local Job Center to review your resume and offer suggestions to help you create a winning resume.