Although it may seem easy to answer, it’s really not. Lacking details as to what the individual’s background contains and the job being sought, there is no set response.

Unlike 10 to 15 years ago, today’s resumes aren’t a simple listing of your professional and academic experience. These documents are now targeted toward distinct industries. In other words, they’re specialized. No longer can you submit a resume that proves you are a jack of all trades, because that’s not what hiring managers and recruiters want to see. They want in-depth knowledge of your niche in a certain industry.

Therefore, there is no such thing as a one-size-resume fitting all. Something as simple as format can differ widely with candidates. An individual in accounting would choose a conservative approach, whereas a ‘creative’ would want a design and fonts with a bit more flair.

Although resumes are – and should be – as different as people’s personalities, there are certain basics that must be included in every resume. These are:

1. A strong opening summary that paints the individual as the perfect candidate for the position

2. Showcased accomplishments that are quantified

3. Professional experience that doesn’t go back more than 15 years

4. An education section – or training section – highlighting post high school academics or specialized training

In order to stand out from the crowd and to showcase what’s unique about your knowledge, skills and abilities, you need a resume that dovetails your talents to the position requirements.

Settling for anything less will only add time to your job search.

One of the hardest concepts for job seekers to understand is that resumes aren’t  geared towards their preferences. Rather, it’s the hiring manager or recruiter you’re trying to impress.

Which means that first you need to know what makes a great resume:

1. A strong opening summary that paints you as the ideal candidate for the position. It should be rich with keywords and contain one, preferably two, recent/relevant/quantified accomplishments. No objectives, please. Objectives are telling the hiring authority what you want. They don’t care about that. They want to know what you can do for their company.

2. Showcased accomplishments. Not a repetition of what you have in the opening summary but more in depth results of your work. The best place to highlight them is below the opening summary in their own section. Don’t bury them within tasks in the professional experience section. And remember to quantify your results with dollar figures and time periods.

3. Professional experience that focuses on results not simply tasks. Hiring managers and recruiters want to know if the action you took made the company money or saved it money.

4. Post high school education or training. If you don’t have a college degree, be certain to include any relevant job related training.

What a resume shouldn’t necessarily include is your preferences, such as:

1. Template choice: If you’ve chosen a template because you like its flair consider what a hiring manager might think. Is the template more for a creative when you’re in a conservative industry? Is the font hard to read? Does it take up too much space on the page making the resume unnecessarily long? All good points to consider. Remember, it’s not your opinion that matters here. It’s what the hiring authority thinks.

2. Is your resume too long? Although you’re proud of your lengthy list of projects, if they have nothing to do with the job you’re targeting, you’re wasting the hiring authority’s time.

3. Are you including information that has nothing to do with the job search? You may want to boast about awards you received in college; however, if you’re at a professional level your work history should speak for itself.

4. Have you put hobbies, interests and the like on your resume? If so, take them off unless they add to your professional expertise. Stating that you like extreme sports may cause a hiring manager to pause and reconsider whether you’re too much of a risk taker for the position.

When you keep in mind that your resume is written for an audience other than you, you’ll be able to hit on the points hiring managers and recruiters most want to see.

1. A federal job search is not like a private sector job search. Let’s say you’re seeking a banking job in the private sector. You tailor your resume toward that industry and send it to all the banking institutions in your area or in other states if you’re agreeable to relocation. A federal resume doesn’t work that way. You can’t write one resume and send it to various agencies (eg: DOD, FDA, FHA, etc.). Every federal job has a vacancy announcement (job position) with a unique number and requirements for it. Therefore, your federal resume will be submitted to one agency or institution only…not all of them.

2. Federal jobs may require additional documentation. These may be KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities), MTQs (Managerial and Technical Qualification Statements), or ECQs (Executive Core Qualifications). These are essay type questions that you must answer indicating how your background meets the requirements of the position.

3. Federal resumes are formatted for the Resumix system. Unlike formatted Word resumes that go to employers in the private sector, a Resumix resume does not have bolding, italics, special fonts, etc. It is unformatted, looking like an ascii or plain text resume (the kind you send in the body of an email). Some federal resumes may be formatted. It depends upon the job and the agency requirements.

4. Federal resumes may be lengthy – more than 10 pages – or they may have a strict word count.

5. They contain information you would never put in a private sector resume. That would include your Social Security Number, supervisor’s name, contact #, high school information, etc.

The above are just some of the major differences between a federal and private sector resume.

Before you begin your federal job search, it’s important to familiarize yourself with these differences. If you fail to follow guidelines, you will not be considered for the position.

More and more companies are demanding that their employees prove their worth. It’s not enough to simply come in on time, engage in the tasks in your job description, then go home, especially if you’re in a contracting industry or your company is downsizing.

To be retained in this poor economy, you need to show your employer that you are invaluable. And if the worst happens and you’re laid off or your employer goes out of business, then you must market yourself to another company as being their only choice in a new hire.

How do you do this?

At your current job, keep updating your resume with all of your accomplishments (those activities in which you have either made your company money or saved it money). An up-to-date, polished resume will be invaluable should a promotion come available or if staff is going to be cut and your job is on the line.

If you’re looking for new employment, updating your resume is even more essential. Hiring managers and recruiters don’t know who you are and they won’t believe blanket statements like “I’m great at what I do”, “I’ll be an asset at your firm”. They want proof.

The only way to provide that proof is to again showcase what you’ve done at previous jobs. Make your resume accomplishment-focused rather than task-focused.  There may be hundreds of other individuals who can do what you do on the job. But there’s only a few that will excel, proving they will grow a company, adding to its success.

From the first day of any job, you should be looking five years down the road to what you want next and how you intend to succeed. During that time, you should do all that you can to make certain your employer sees you as an asset rather than a liability.

Keep a running record of what you’ve achieved. That running record is a resume. Make certain it’s always updated, always ready for the new job search.

The kind of employee you should be is one that everyone wants. All you have to do is prove it.

Once you get past those initial concerns, your next thought may be:

1. The format you like best. Reverse chronological, functional, a combination of the two.

2. Presentation or template choice. Resume writing companies often have several from which to choose in a variety of fonts.

3. Page length. One, two or more?

While you’re pondering these choices or considering what the resume writer suggests, it’s important to remember one thing: What you like or don’t like is not as important as what the hiring manager expects to see.

That’s right, your opinion as to style, page length and template choice isn’t important. After all, you’re not the target audience for the resume. The hiring manager or recruiter is. Therefore, it’s best to keep their preferences in mind. And to trust your resume writer.

Professional resume writers know from experience what will fly with a hiring manager or a recruiter. They know not to list every single thing you’ve done in your professional or academic career even if the data is dear to your heart. They know personal information isn’t wise to include either. Yes, you’re very proud that you once won a music award. However, if you’re no longer in the performing arts, the hiring manager couldn’t care less about that part of your background.

Other pitfalls to avoid include:

1. Going back too far in your work history. That invites age discrimination.

2. Keeping your resume task oriented (daily duties) rather than showcasing accomplishments (results of what you’ve done).

3. Failing to quantify achievements.

4. Writing a ‘general, one-size-fits-all’ resume that is so generic none of your skills stand out.

Even if you’re tempted to tell the resume writer what you prefer, it’s best to listen to the advice she or he has to offer. If you’re told a two page resume is best, given the resume writer’s past experience, then believe what’s said. Your resume writer wants  you to succeed and to get an interview.

Trust the experts. Listen to what they propose. Benefit from their years of expertise. And put the hiring manager or recruiter’s preferences first rather than your own.

For many of us, that format works just fine.

But what if your circumstances are different and you don’t have a consistent work history? What if you have gaps? Spotty employment? You’ve job hopped a lot? What then?

You need to consider other resume formats to minimize those deficiencies as much as possible.

The most popular resume format is the reverse chronological. You present your most recent job first, followed by the next most recent and on and on. Employers prefer this type of resume as it clearly shows job progression, length of employment and gaps.

Since gaps are a negative, many candidates want to hide them. The format they might choose is called functional. In a functional resume, a skills section follows the opening summary (or objective), stating the individual’s strengths. For a salesperson that might be cold calling, closing, upselling, etc. This section, rich with detail, is then followed by an employment area with no detail whatsoever. The idea here is to show what you know rather than where you learned and used it.

While that might seem like a good idea, know this – hiring managers don’t like functional formats because they do hide gaps.

Keeping that in mind, another format has become popular and it’s called a combination resume. In this type of document, a skills section follows the opening summary…showing the candidate’s knowledge and abilities in a particular industry or position. Following that is the professional experience section in a reverse chronological order. Details are provided. Dates given. Yes, the gaps are still there for all to see; however, the hope is that the previous skills section is so strong that a hiring manager will still be impressed enough to consider the individual for an interview.

If you have a less than perfect background – and most of us have something we’re worried about – then it’s wise to organize your data to showcase your strengths and minimize any negatives.  The correct resume format can go a long way toward doing that.

Recently, I spoke to an individual who wanted to use her resume for a position as an office manager, legal assistant, customer service rep and retail associate.

She had all the skills and experience required for each of the above positions, so that wasn’t the problem. However, to submit the same resume to hiring managers in different industries is inviting failure.

Why?

First – an applicant who is applying for everything looks scattered – the proverbial ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. Secondly, a hiring manager will wonder about an individual who’s had so many career changes. Does the applicant get bored easily and move on with little notice? Is the candidate incapable of holding a job for very long?

Whenever you’re applying for a position, it’s best to stay on point with that industry’s requirements and leave all the other data for other industries. It’s never wise to use a ‘one size resume fits all industries’. Resumes need to be tailored and targeted for each field – preferably for each job opening.

If you’re going after a legal assistant’s job, why would the firm’s hiring manager care if you’re great in the retail trade? Although your people skills there and in a customer service position might serve you well in the legal arena, it still dilutes your impact if you’re talking about another industry.

Even worse is if your resume makes you look desperate. Trying to write a resume to fit more than one, perhaps multiple industries is simply stating: “I’ll take anything. Anything – please.”

That’s not the image you want to portray. Your resume needs to show that you are the single best candidate for the position in a field overloaded with other equally, qualified applicants. It needs to show your commitment to the position, the field, the employer and the industry. You can’t do that if you’re targeting several in the same document.

It needs to convey to the employer that you are interested in their opening and that you will do well at it.

Only a targeted and well-tailored resume will be able to do that.

In one way that’s true – if the resume has extraneous data unrelated to the job search and is filled with fluff, the above reasoning makes sense.

However, if pertinent data is excluded from a resume in order to reach an arbitrary page length, that can be as disastrous.

Too often I’ve seen clients sell themselves short by asking for a one page resume when their background clearly calls for two pages. In order to reach their desired page length, margins have to cut to the point where text appears to be running off the page. And the text must be reduced to a size that’s unreadable to most.

Certainly, the page length is where the client wants it, but is it wise?

I know it’s not. No hiring manager will look at a stellar, superbly organized resume filled with pertinent data on the candidate’s knowledge/skills/abilities and dismiss the individual because of the resume’s length. That simply doesn’t make sense.

If you’re an executive with many years of experience, submitting a one page resume will surely reduce your chances of an interview, especially if you’re excluding vital data in order to meet page length.

Remember, content – not length – is what’s important. A modern, effective resume is as long as it needs to be, provided it contains relevant information about you in relation to the targeted job.

Being invited to interview may be a dream you don’t believe will happen.

However, companies need employees as much as you need a job. They are interviewing. They are hiring. They are also weeding out candidates that don’t present them with the best possible background for the position.

Knowing what an employer wants isn’t difficult. They want you, the potential employee, to either make their company money or save their company money. Yes, it’s as simple as that.

They want your resume to reflect your knowledge, skills, abilities, in an easy to read and follow format.

They want to know what you achieved – the results of your tasks, not simply your tasks.

A stellar resume that is accomplishment oriented, rather than task oriented, will get you in the ‘to-be-interviewed’ pile. Dovetailing your background to fit perfectly with a company’s needs will place you far ahead of your competitors.

Getting an interview and being awarded the job is doable – all you need to remember is to give employers what they want.

As with the varying countries nationalities, cultures and mores, resumes are most assuredly different for various parts of the world.

For example:

In China the guidelines include -

Personal Information (include):

1. Sex

2. Marital Status

3. Date of Birth

4. Nationality

5. Permanent Address

Career Objective: Describe what you want to achieve and position sought

Education:

1. List high school education with reference to specific courses and programs

2. Include extracurricular activities that are relevant to job search

Special Skills (include):

1. Language Skills

2. Computer Skills

Professional Experience:

1. Indicate whether work was part-time or full- time.

2. Explain all gaps in employment history.

3. If part-time work was chosen, indicate why you did NOT work full-time.

Personal Interests (include):

1. Sports activities

2. Other interests

Format:  Begin with Objective, go to Education, then list Professional Experience and everything else (in that order)

Length: Two pages; no longer than three pages

In the UK the guidelines include -

Education:

1. Secondary education, include dates/names/locations of schools, plus qualifications received

Special Skills (include):

1. Language Skills

2. Computer Skills

Professional Experience:

1. Include reasons for leaving

Interests/Hobbies: Describe how time outside of work is spent

Format: Education followed by professional experience

Length: No longer than two pages

And in Saudi Arabia the guidelines include -

Personal Information (Include):

1. Date of Birth

2. Marital Status

3. # of Children

4. Nationality

5. Citizenship(s)

6. Religious Affiliation

Education:

1. Include name and address of each institution attended

Professional Experience:

1. Use company descriptors

2. List all employers worked for

Special Skills (include):

1. Language Skills

2. Computer Skills

Residency Permit/Letter of Release:

1. Note whether you have a transferable igama (residency permit) from your present employer or can obtain a letter of release

Format: Education, experience, personal details (in that order); do NOT leave any gaps in dates.

Length:  Three to four pages is acceptable

As you can see, there are variances by country. Make certain you know the guidelines before you submit your resume overseas.