I thought it would be a novel idea to have a thread where members could help others with their resumes. Whether they are for internships, jobs, college applications, graduate study applications, or scholarships, feel free to ask any and all questions about the various levels of formal resume writing.


I am going to start of by posting a few basic guidelines for formal resume writing, and perhaps I will post my resume from a year or so back so you can see what one is like.


Hopefully I will be able to post something decent up by the end of this weekend.

What is a resume? Is it the American equivalent of a CV?

quote jobsearch.about.com

What's the difference between a resume and a CV?
The primary differences are the length, the content and the purpose. A resume is a one or two page summary of your skills, experience and education. A goal of resume writing is to be brief and concise since, at best, the resume reader will spend a minute or so reviewing your qualifications.
A Curriculum Vitae, commonly referred to as CV, is a longer (two or more pages), more detailed synopsis. It includes a summary of your educational and academic backgrounds as well as teaching and research experience, publications, presentations, awards, honors, affiliations and other details.

When to Use a CV.
In the United States a Curriculum Vitae is used primarily when applying for international, academic, education, scientific or research positions or when applying for fellowships or grants. As with a resume, you may need different versions of a CV for different type of positions.

I see. I think we use CVs of varying types for pretty much everything over here. Or at least, we were taught how to write them at school and the word resume was never mentioned. Maybe resumes are used for more specific things, but in general I think CVs are used more often here.

In Oz at least Resumes are the sort of thing that you drop in to fifteen different places when you're looking for a job. The problem as I see it is that companies are used to receiving these things day in, day out and - let's face it - it would be pretty mundane to read fifty a day.

So the key point that I would advise would be to make your resume stand out from everyone else's. I don't necessarily mean that you should print it on colourful paper or what not because many companies might see this as lacking professionalism. What I tend to do is include a letter of application with my resume that addresses the company that I'm applying to specifically, and then just leaving the resume as a concise summary of everything that I've said in the resume. By just giving them a resume of dot points, etc., you can seem pretty mechanical (especially if all they get to read is resumes) and it doesn't give them an insight into your personality, which is often a key factor.

Not only that, but not too many people give a decent letter of application with resumes. You'll stand out on that basis if nothing else.