Strive as I might to keep the resume to one page, I have noticed if you use the one page format sample as provided in the workbook, you can have a max of 6 positions to keep it to one page. I happen to have 10 positions in my carrer all at different companies, so how in the world do I keep it to one page or do I?
Option 1: Cut off all the positions after 6, thus creating a 12 year gap between graduation and the first job on the resume
Option 1: Go to 2 pages.
Thanks,
David
Why not change the grouping
Why not change the grouping to functions you did instead of companies? For example: First group = Floor sales: Sears 2001-2003; Penney's 2003-2004 (Description); Second group = Retail Dept manager: Penney's 2004-2005, Target 2005-2006; Third group = Store manager: Target 2006 - 2008, Costco 2008 - present.
I don't know M-T's suggestions, but the purpose of the CV is to show what you have done, and what skills you demonstrated by doing things. Actually, its purpose is to get you to the interview so you can get the job, but to get the interview, you need to show what you have done for others and therefore what they can expect you to do for them.
One of my favorite quotes for interviews: "You need to blow your own horn; no one else knows your tune as well as you do."
>6 Jobs & 1 page?
[...] max of 6 positions to keep it to one page [...]
I believe there are several steps you can take to have your resume fit on one page while including your full job history. Chances are, you may have already done some of these:
- Shorten older job descriptions as much as possible
- Retain *all* accomplishments and job histories in a much longer career management document (CMD) refer to: http://www.manager-tools.com/2010/06/systematic-career-documentation-pa… , and
- provide only the most relevant job accomplishments (i.e. fewer) with older jobs saving more space to include/emphasize more recent accomplishments
- increase margins, reduce type size, minimize space between paragraphs
- steadfastly keep an accomplishment to one line
This is not your history
David,
Your Career Management Document needs all the information. Any given resume is a single page of the most important information. How many years of work do the last 6 positions cover?
It gets much harder when
It gets much harder when you have had 11 jobs. Some of them have been contracts in IT.
Lots of other options...
... smaller font, narrower margins, put less into each job.
Remember that the purpose of the resume is to get you an interview, and you do that by wowing the hiring manager with your accomplishments, and showing a career progression that includes this job as a logical next step. You get the resume down to one page by taking your career management document and ripping out the things that are least likely to achieve that goal, and you keep doing it until you're down to one page.
This is likely to mean that the older the job, the less accomplishments you'll mention. As jobs age, the accomplishments you have are either irrelevant (moving from worker bee to manager) or trivial in comparison to your current work (when you were 6, reading a book without pictures was awesome... not worth mentioning now). It's likely that the responsibilities of older jobs aren't very informative, so they'd be the next thing I'd eye off (for jobs that didn't have any accomplishment bullets left). Lastly, if absolutely required, *then* I'd consider nuking a job entirely, because yes, a hole is something one might notice -- but a hole 15 years ago won't rate a raised eyebrow.
If, after all that, you've still got more than one page, then if they're all permanent positions, then either (a) you're the unluckiest shlub in town; (b) you're terrible at picking places to work; or (c) you're a job hopper, and having a one-page resume is likely to be the least of your worries.
On the other hand, for contracting jobs, you can bend the rules slightly. If they were all very similar and some time ago (that is, not something you'd be likely to pull a referee from), I wouldn't mind seeing them all grouped together, like this:
Mar 1998-Jun 2004 Chocolate Teapot Development Contractor
Independently contracted to Confabulated Teapots Inc, ChocoPots, Teatastica, and Meltenheims, developing moulds and injection processes for chocolate teapot manufacturing.
Now, if they were all very different roles, that won't work, but in that case, you're back to looking more like a job hopper, because you're not picking something and sticking with it (perhaps you did so amazingly badly in each of your contracts that you got blackballed and had to find another line of work...). In that case, again, a one-page resume is the least of your worries when it comes to getting an interview.