Page 149 - Complete Idiot's Guide to The Perfect Resume

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Chapter 9 ➤ Step Four: You’re an Achiever!

Bonus Check

Be sure that the print of your skill headings appears smaller than your major section head-
ings. You can achieve this by doing one of the following:
➤ Make the skill heading type one or two font sizes smaller than the major section
headings. (To learn about font sizes, see Chapter 11, “Step Six: The Big Production.”)
➤ Use all uppercase letters in the major heading, and use uppercase and lowercase in
the skill headings (see Michael Wong’s resume later in this chapter).

Let’s role-play again: As a supervisor in a software-development
firm looking for a technical supervisor, you might write, “Appli-
cant must be proficient in computer programming and team
leadership.” As a job seeker, you understand that Programming
and Leadership would be good skill headings to use on your
resume for this job.
Take a look at the following resume for Michael Wong. Notice how Career Casualty
his skill headings define his Job Objective, which differed from his
Don’t overwhelm your reader by
Work History. This resume is an excellent example of how a resume
having too many skill headings.
should be about a job-seeker’s future, not his past.
Two (at most three) headings are
usually plenty to make a good
Skills for Sale first impression.
Some functional resume writers have trouble coming up with skill
headings. When selecting the skill headings for your functional
resume, be sure to choose ones that define your future (your Job
Objective), not your past (your Work History). If you feel stuck,
take a look at the following list of skills. Notice that I’ve catego-
rized this list according to four general occupational areas: business
management, education, engineering/technology, and nonprofit
management. Although you may want to focus on an area that’s
close to your job objective, I suggest you read through the entire Career Casualty
list. Maybe a word in another category will inspire you to define
Don’t write lengthy skill headings
your skill set in a way that is uniquely yours.
in your resume. Limit them to no
more than three words each.
Otherwise they become too dif-
ficult to read in the employer’s
typical initial eight-second scan.

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