Can I Wear My Nose Ring to the Interview?: A Crash Course in Finding, Landing, and Keeping Your First Real Job (13 page)

Font:
Times New Roman, Palatino, Garamond, or similar—go for something clean and professional.

Font size:
12-point font is preferable; you may use 11 or 10 if absolutely necessary, but don’t go smaller.

Margin:
One inch on all sides. Beyond setting the margins, you also want to make sure you don’t end up with too much white space. Trace around the written portions of your résumé; if you end up with odd amoebalike patches, rewrite so that entries don’t vary so much in length.

Q. What about the templates that came with my computer?

A.
Most computers come with résumé templates, but they’re not necessarily always formatted in the most intelligent way. Just make sure you’re deciding what to emphasize. A template might look nice, but does it prevent you from tailoring your experience to suit a particular job?

Though people would have you believe that a résumé is a static, objective summation of experience, it can and should be a constantly evolving entity. You are in control of what it conveys, no matter what your job experience has been.

It’s easy enough to tailor your basic résumé to each job for which you apply, rearranging entries and language to highlight particular skills and experience. If you are applying for positions in several fields, it’s especially important that you have a variety of résumés.

Let’s say you were a dancer in college and gave ballet lessons. You waitressed during the summers, you’ve walked dogs, and you’ve volunteered at various animal shelters.

There are three résumés here, waiting to be written: a dance résumé, an animal-care résumé, and a waitressing/customer service/hospitality résumé. If you were applying for a job at a restaurant, you would expand the entries in the “Restaurant/Waitressing Experience” section and move it to the top of the résumé. If you were applying to work in a dance program, you would use your “Dance” résumé, leading off with “Dance Experience.” Ideally you should have more than one entry in each category; don’t be afraid to link categories to achieve this. You might create a section called Dance and Teaching
Experience, for instance. And you might leave certain realms of experience out of one résumé only to highlight them in another.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

Multiple résumés are a great way to diversify your search, especially if you’re undecided about what you want and are using the Rule of Three to explore several realms of interest.

In order to understand why the seemingly minute details of résumé writing are so important, it’s helpful to consider things—again—from an employer’s perspective.

After a job is posted, the first cut is often made by the HR (Human Resources) department or an assistant. Since the sorter might be faced with a stack of several hundred résumés, she is as invested in finding reasons to reject people as she is in finding qualified candidates. Don’t give her a reason to eliminate you.

So what would make someone toss a résumé?

First, there are easy physical criteria: The paper is not standard size (8½ by 11 inches) or a neutral color, or is dirty, stained, or ripped; the ink is not black, the text is handwritten, there are pictures, quotations, or any other decoration (though again, this doesn’t apply if you’re going for a job in an art, design, PR, or advertising milieu, in which case the résumé can serve as a sample of your work); there is something handwritten as an addition to the typed résumé—meaning that you did not take the time to correct or update it adequately; the font is too small or too big, the margins are too wide or nonexistent. If you use a confusing or messy format, you might be weeded out. That means no résumés with splits down the middle or boxes. Stick to the classic models on pages 66–67 and 70–71.

Stick to one page at this phase. If you go over a page, assume the second page will not be read. Some readers literally rip off and toss away the second page of a two-page résumé. (Later on in your career, though, a longer résumé may be appropriate.) If your potential employer needs more information, he will ask for it.

Why is the look so important? The reader may instinctively assume that, if you can’t be bothered to figure out the conventional résumé format, she can’t count on you to master the conventions of her field. In general, employers want the candidate with the most experience for the job, one who will, as they say, hit the ground running. They want evidence that you have been in the field or have been exposed to the field through internships or volunteer experience—and they want evidence that you can learn quickly.

I
F
I
SEE A TYPO
, I tell candidates their résumés might be rejected right off the bat. What’s so bad about one tiny mistake? It’s really not so tiny. A typo is actually a huge red flag that says, “I cannot be trusted to proofread my own work. I am likely to send out error-ridden letters with your name on them—you’ll have to check everything I write.” Now, as an employer, do I want to take on this responsibility? NO! I want someone who will catch MY errors, not make his own.