My favorite piece of
advice comes from Laszlo Bock, former SVP of People Operations at Google.
Focus on content and try to get your accomplishments in the following format:
Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]quote:
In other words, start with an active verb, numerically measure what you accomplished, provide a baseline for comparison, and detail what you did to achieve your goal. Consider the following two descriptions of the same work, and ask yourself which would look better on a resume:
[ol]
1) Studied financial performance of companies and made investment recommendations.[/ol]
[ol]
2) Improved portfolio performance by 12% ($1.2M) over one year by refining cost of capital calculations for information-poor markets and re-weighting portfolio based on resulting valuations[/ol]
When I've looked at my friends' resumes (and even my own) I've noticed that people in some industries don't keep good tabs on metrics and accomplishments. But Laszlo recommends trying to use this formula as much as possible.
This will work for those with a skills-based resume:
quote:
Candidate with skill-based resume
- Skills: Excellent customer service skills. Friendly and positive attitude
- Skills: Excellent customer service skills and positive attitude as demonstrated by receiving employee of the month in four consecutive months in 2014
This helped me when going through the job hunt in 2012 after leaving Afghanistan. YMMV.