Page 35 - The Editors of VGM Career Books - Resumes for Computer Careers, Second Edition (2002)

26 Resumes for Health and Medical Careers

• Tabs. Use your space bar. Tabs will not work.

• Any special characters, such as mathematical symbols.
• Word wrap. Use hard returns (the return key) to make line breaks.

• Centering or other formatting. Align everything at the left margin.

• Bold or italic fonts. Everything will be converted to plain text when
you save the file as a “text only” document.

Check carefully for any mistakes before you save the document as a
text file. Spellcheck and proofread it several times; then ask someone with
a keen eye to go over it again for you. Remember: the key is to keep it sim-
ple. Any attempt to make this resume pretty or decorative may result in a
resume that is confusing and hard to read. After you have saved the doc-
ument, you can cut and paste it into an e-mail or onto a website.

Layout for a Paper Resume

A great deal of care—and much more formatting—is necessary to achieve
an attractive layout for your paper resume. There is no single appropriate
layout that applies to every resume, but there are a few basic rules to fol-
low in putting your resume on paper:
• Leave a comfortable margin on the sides, top, and bottom of the page
(usually one to one and a half inches).

• Use appropriate spacing between the sections (two to three line
spaces are usually adequate).
• Be consistent in the type of headings you use for different sections
of your resume. For example, if you capitalize the heading EMPLOY-
MENT HISTORY, don’t use initial capitals and underlining for a sec-
tion of equal importance, such as Education.

• Do not use more than one font in your resume. Stay consistent by
choosing a font that is fairly standard and easy to read, and don’t
change it for different sections. Beware of the tendency to try to make
your resume original by choosing fancy type styles; your resume
may end up looking unprofessional instead of creative. Unless you
are in a very creative and artistic field, you should almost always stick
with tried-and-true type styles like Times New Roman and Palatino,
which are often used in business writing. In the area of resume
styles, conservative is usually the best way to go.