Broward College Offers Tips to Revamp Your Resumes

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL (August 29, 2014) –When it comes to first impressions in a job search, there is nothing as important as a well-organized and visually appealing resume, especially when job recruiters quickly skim over the document before making a decision to toss it into the possible contender or rejection pile. With such a short time to get important information across, and many other candidates competing for the same position, it is crucial that job seekers make their resumes as polished and professional as possible. To commemorate Update Your Resume Month, which is recognized in September, Broward College’s Career Center is offering tips to produce a resume that will impress potential employers -

• Keep formatting consistent. Although you may have an urge to get creative with font sizes or colors, it is best to keep formatting uniform throughout the document. Do not center or justify all text, but align left and use a single font. This will help make it easier to scan the document, so if the recruiter needs to refer back to something important, they won’t get distracted by unnecessary elements.
• Be careful with all-caps. To create emphasis, avoid using all capitals. Not only is it difficult to read, but improper. Reserve all capitals for your name and bold all other important section headings.
• That said: bold wisely. Again, it is easy to get carried away when trying to highlight important information so that it immediately stands out. When deciding to bold text, don’t bold two pieces of information that are related, such as a job title and the company you worked for at that position. It is better to bold either the company or job title. For new graduates with little work experience, bolding the company name would be a better option. Whereas, those with a long work history could choose to bold a job title instead.
• Keep bulleted information brief. It is best to follow the “short and sweet” advice for a resume, but especially when it comes to bulleted information that you use to describe your past work experience. Make sure to keep it to a sentence or two.
• Make sure to use digits. Writing out the spelling of a number will not only take up more space, but it will also decrease readability. To avoid this problem, be sure to use digits.

For more information on Broward College’s Career Center, visit http://www.broward.edu/studentresources/career/Pages/default.aspx.

-BC-