By Tamar Asedo Sherman
Before you can apply for a job, even an entry level job, you need a résumé. A prospective employer wants to know right away what you can do to further the goals of her company. Keep in mind that you’ve only got about 20 seconds to capture her attention before she tosses your résumé aside and looks at the next one.
You can dust off your old résumé and use it as a baseline, but you must update it. Don’t panic if it’s been years since your last job. Résumés no longer require a chronological listing of what you’ve been doing all your life.
Maybe you never had a résumé to begin with. Maybe you were injured as a child/youth, before you started working, or you worked in construction or a trade where you never needed one. Well, now you do.
A résumé is generally a 1-page summary of your unique combination of skills, abilities, and experiences. Its purpose is to advertise yourself so a prospective employer will want to interview you. It’s helpful to tailor your résumé for each job description so that you are presenting your qualifications in a different way for each job.
No two employment specialists or human resource managers will agree on what the résumé should include and how it should look. While many suggest starting with an objective, other recruiters and hiring managers say they don’t care what kind of position you are looking for. They’re interested in what you can do for them, how you can meet their needs.
So the best advice is to look at several samples of résumés which are readily available online through any search engine or at the library in the career section. Choose a format with which you feel most comfortable. Whatever word processing system you are using will have résumé templates built in as an option in creating a new document. There are many different visual styles. All have the same basic information, a heading with your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. If you’ve got a cutesy screen name like my friend “loveablenancy,” better open another account that is more professional just for business purposes.
The big difference in résumés is whether you choose a traditional chronological format, a functional one that presents your strengths, or a combination. For people who have been out of the work force for a period, the functional format is more useful because you can tailor it to highlight the skills that are most relevant to the job for which you are applying.
Employers frequently list the following skills in job descriptions: show initiative, good interpersonal skills, ability to multitask, critical thinking, highly motivated, strong communication skills, and ability to meet deadlines. These are skills that many of us with disabilities possess.
To get started on your résumé, make a list of jobs you’ve held, where they were (city and state are enough), and the dates you held them. It’s not necessary to go back more than 10-15 years. List any skills you have, such as those in the previous paragraph, including foreign languages you can speak or computer programs you know. Be specific in listing any accomplishments, using brief phrases with action verbs (’wrote,’ ‘created,’ ‘organized,’ etc.) and numbers to quantify, whenever possible.
Include words from the job description to show relevancy, in case your résumé is scanned by a computer. My résumé was discarded for an editorial position for which I was well qualified because I did not list specific computer skills, MS Word®, Excel®, Access®, PowerPoint® for PC and Mac.
Do list volunteer activities, if relevant. In my case, my volunteer activities reflected my interest in helping people with disabilities become more independent, which led to my going back to school to study rehabilitation counseling and my new career as an employment specialist. How you spend your leisure time is a good indication of what’s really important to you and can lead to employment opportunities.
Include your education, schools attended and locations, degrees and dates received, major or concentration. Finally, there is no reason to note that “references are available upon request,” but it is a good idea to prepare a list of references on a separate sheet to have handy if an employer asks for it.
You can arrange and re-arrange the information in different order until you’re happy with it, with a summary of qualifications, highlight skills, work experience, volunteer activities, and education. Do modify it to suit each job for which you apply. But be sure to have someone critique and proofread your résumé before you send it to anyone and write an individualized cover letter with each résumé you send out.
Tamar Asedo Sherman works as an employment specialist at UCP- Suffolk in Hauppauge, NY. She can be reached at action@unitedspinal.org.
