Is your resume working for you or against you?

The following tips can help you to write an effective resume while avoiding the most common pitfalls.

They've reviewed millions of résumés and seen it all. Recruiters say you'd be surprised at how many candidates leave out important facts, such as the names and locations of companies where they've worked, or, most important, the experience they have with the required skills. The purpose of your résumé is to communicate your experiences and accomplishments as they relate to the open position and to obtain a job interview. Because each situation is different, you should tailor your résumé to each opportunity.

You have 30 Seconds!
With the number of resumes seen by hiring managers these days, a candidate's message needs to get across in a hurry. One HR professional estimates that a resume and cover letter will get of attention of an employer for 30 seconds to one minute. That means that the writing needs to be concise, specific and focused on the job that is being offered. A new technique for helping a hiring manager identify and track top people is the keyword section of the resume. A candidate's experience may be broad, and keywords at the top of a resume will immediately focus attention on the types of job titles, responsibilities, and technical proficiency that are being offered.

Remember, a hiring professional will probably scan dozens of resumes before deciding which candidates to interview. If the hiring professional can not easily see the experience and/or skills required for the position on your resume, it will be excluded.

Here are seven signs it may be time to tweak (or toss) your résumé:

1. No Career Summary/Introductory Statement
Most hiring companies don't have time to match unspecified résumés to open positions, so lead off with a career summary or introductory statement that makes it clear what type of position you are seeking and why you are qualified for the job. If you are applying for a specific position that you have seen on the companies web site or on a job board, write a summary of you background and how your experience relates to the position being applied for.

2. Lack of Keywords and Phrases
To pass through a company's applicant tracking software, your résumé must contain the keywords and phrases it is screening for. These words are not the verbs stressed in paper résumés, but nouns such as job titles and technical skills.

To find out what keywords you should be using, read the job posting or obtain the actual job description.

3. No Evidence of Your Experience
You must have the experience you have with the required skills on your resume or you will not be considered for the job. Not only should the required skills be in the summary of your resume, you must show where you have had the experience in the body of your resume. Your résumé should not merely list the jobs you've held; it should provide specific examples of how you achieved success.
Your description of past work experience, is the section that most employers will read first. It's crucial to state your duties and accomplishments honestly and concisely. Try to avoid general statements such as, "Assisted in production of final product". Rather, describe your contribution in detail, including information such as what type of product your company manufactures and your specific part in the production process. Instead, you might write; "Performed final assembly of specialty lighting fixtures utilizing power hand tools." Remember, this is your chance to impress the employer with your on-the-job experience - don't sell yourself short.

4. Use of Personal Pronouns and Articles
With just two pages to sell yourself, make each word count. Write in a telegraphic style, eliminating all personal pronouns and articles like "the," "a" and "an." Removing the "I," "me" and "my" from your résumé not only frees up space, but creates a subliminal perception of objectivity.

5. Irrelevant Information
Irrelevant information keeps the reader from seeing your selling points. Weigh each portion of your experience from the hiring company's perspective to decide what to include and what to emphasize. If you're applying for an engineering position, for example, don't devote a whole paragraph to your job as a camp counselor unless the position has elements that are transferable to the engineering job. And never include information about your marital status, personal situation, hobbies or interests unless they are relevant to the job for which you're applying.

6. Poor Formatting
Unless you have no work experience or have held a number of different jobs in a short amount of time, a chronological résumé is the most effective. That means using the following order:
· Header (your name, address, e-mail address and phone number)
· Career summary, profiling the scope of your experience and skills
· Reverse chronological employment history emphasizing achievements
· Education - If you have completed a college program, it is not necessary to list high school, especially if it has been more than ten years since your graduation.

Since poor alignment, spacing and use of bolding and caps make a résumé hard to read, you may want to use a résumé template.

7. Typos and Misspelled Words
From the would-be administrative assistant who claimed to be a "rabid typist" to the executive who boasted that he was "instrumental in ruining the entire operation," misspellings communicate that you have poor writing skills or a lackadaisical attitude. Proofread your résumé carefully and have someone else read it as well. An amazing number of people destroy a well planned resume by not proofreading. For example, while sitting down with an applicant one day, I pointed out the misspellings and grammatical errors that I'd found on his resume. He smiled and said his wife had also noticed them and told him he should make corrections before mailing the resumes. He had told her that "close was close enough" when it came to a resume. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This man was applying for a management position in a printing company, a position which requires great attention to detail.