Well, my days as an Army Officer are numbered and as I prepare to re-enter the work force it's time for me to put together a resume and get it out there. It's been quite awhile since I've done one (or even thought about it) and wanted to appeal to my GRM brothers and sisters for assistance. Does anyone know of any good resources out there for building your resume? Anyone done a good one recently that they wouldn't mind sharing at least the shell with me as a pattern?
I will begin working with a corporate recruiting company when I return from vacation in two weeks and am pretty sure they will help me too, but I am not limiting my job search to the companies they find and would like to be prepared with my own version of the resume for those applications/interviews that fall outside of the scope of the recruiters.
Thanks in advance!
I have mine setup something like this:
Name, contact info
statement about self
current job
description of job, 1 or 2 sentences
accomplishments at job, "I helped reduce translation costs by training colleagues in content reuse"
rinse, repeat,
education
personal interests (my auto/motorcycle personal interests are what got me an interview with MerCruiser and started my new career as a tech writer
My advice, after having reviewed a bunch lately, is don't bullE36 M3 too much and focus really, really heavily on writing tight cover letters. The letter is where I can see you think a bit.
Both the resume and the cover letter need to be tailored to the job. It's a huge pain in the ass, but carpet bombing companies with a bunch of identical resumes won't work in a bad job market. Every line on that resume should be something that matters to a hypothetical reviewer at the specific company you're addressing it to. Do not try to fill space up. Last time I did this process, I had one long 2-page resume and for every application I sent out I would delete half of it. Same thing with the cover letter.
Keep the resume to one page. Keep the cover letter to a short page.
If you get an interview, research the company and what it does as much as possible. Have lots of questions for them.
All good advice so far, thanks. The cover letter is something I've got to get done as well...
DustoffDave wrote:
I will begin working with a corporate recruiting company when I return from vacation in two weeks and am pretty sure they will help me too, but I am not limiting my job search to the companies they find and would like to be prepared with my own version of the resume for those applications/interviews that fall outside of the scope of the recruiters.
Be careful when doing a job search both on your own and with a recruiter - I did the same thing many years ago, and ended up in an embarrassing situation where I had set up an interview with a company on one day while the recruiter set up an interview with the same company on the next day. No, I didn't get the job. 
Hahaha! "No, no, that was my twin brother -- we have the same first name..."
