There are three basic types of resumes: chronological, modified chronological and functional. The decision to use a particular style depends upon your past work experience and your current objective.
Name of Company or Organization and Location (city/province). Do not include supervisor's name or employer's street address or telephone number.
Dates, beginning and terminating (for full-time, on-going positions of at least one year, it is not necessary to include a reference to the months).
In point form, talk about what you contributed to or accomplished on the job
Indicate the level of responsibility you were entrusted with (e.g., depositing cash or managing department during absence of supervisor)
If appropriate provide evidence of your having been promoted
Begin each entry with an action verb (see the list below), listing accomplishments, tasks performed, skills developed, or, if appropriate, specialties learned
The amount of specific detail will be determined by the relevance to the job you are applying for (e.g., report writing - more information about literature search and computer analysis of data would be included only when the reader needs to evaluate the relevance of your past experience)
Write in the past tense for former positions and present tense for current positions
If your work is not directly related, emphasize transferable skills (e.g., if you worked as a server and now want to work in an administrative role, use points such as ability to work under pressure/stress, communicative/interpersonal skills, attention to detail, etc. when describing the server position)
Do not use personal pronouns, such as "my", "their", or definite and indefinite articles, such as "a", "an", "the"
Prioritize the points when you are describing your work as they relate to your job objective, not to the job you are describing
For jobs you want to include but not in detail, add a sub-section at the end of Work Experience called Other Work Experience (dates if you wish, e.g., 20__ - __) with job titles, or job titles and type of work environment if helpful (e.g., camp counsellor, waiter in fast-paced truck stop, stock clerk in automotive store)
If you started/ran your own business, refer to it by its proper name and your official title. For example, if you are John Smith, you could write:
Owner/Manager, ABC Window Cleaning
Toronto, Ontario or
Proprietor, John Smith, Toronto, Ontario
Residential Window Cleaning Service
The difference between this type of resume and the Chronological one is the section on work experience
It enables you to feature related experience, or to move to the top of the section those jobs which would ordinarily be listed after less relevant ones
Replace the words ‘Work Experience’ with a description about the type of experience (e.g., Research Experience, Business Experience)
Collect in one section all jobs of similar type and list them in reverse chronological order
To continue with Step 4.2.4, click here.
