(By Bill Gaffney)
There are many thoughts and ideas on resume writing. Some are excellent. Some are___; well we’ll just leave it at not so good. And of course you can go to the library or bookstore and pick up scores of books on the subject, all of which will tell you something different. And I’m not going to tell you I’m the expert on the subject and have the definitive answers. What I will tell you is I spent over 10 years in executive recruiting and gained a pretty good feel for what hiring managers get excited about and it is not how fancy you can make your resume look unless you are in advertising or a creative writing (PR) field. And I have had my suggestions that I have given for over ten years independently reaffirmed by an article in a top business magazine, in which they quoted some of the top retained search firms and Darrell Gurney, author of "HeadHunters Revealed".

So I am composing some of my general thoughts on resume writing for you.

• Hiring managers are looking for what you do professionally and what you have accomplished, not your hobbies, nor your social organizations or how many children you have. Ask yourself, "Are these things really applicable to my job?"
• Hiring managers are looking for the best person to fill a position, not an objective of what you would like to do or a generic objective that takes a paragraph to say nothing. If you are applying for a job then obviously you are interested. They are not going to select you based on a great objective. They don’t care.
• Resumes only get you an interview, they don’t come close to getting you hired, typically. Keep this in mind when writing one. You have 30 seconds to capture the reader’s attention.
• As I stated earlier stay away from fancy graphics, unusual fonts, vertical columns, too much center justification, putting your name and other contact information in a header, etc. All of these things make them hard to convert into RTF (which most databases store resumes in). As a test convert your document into RTF and see how it looks. Two final notes in this bullet, don’t put your picture on your resume and don’t include references available on request. Everyone already knows you will be happy to give them references.
• Do your resume in a Word (or a nice RTF) format. More than 90% of computer users use Word. Stay away from PDF and other much less used formats. I know, you don’t want to support Bill Gates, but you’re looking for a job here, not leading a revolution.
• The resume needs to reflect who you are, your style, etc. Stay away from having someone else write it. I don’t want to put "professional" resume writers out of business, but the bottom line is most of them aren’t going to enhance what you can do on your own with some guidance.
• Finally, the biggest no no, nothing over two pages! Remember you only have 30 seconds to grab their attention. They want to know what you do, not your life story.

Bill Gaffney is a career coach. He works with professionals across all fields to assist them with their careers. His focus is on job search skills, including search techniques, interviewing skills, negotiating, etc. Bill also works with career oriented individuals in other areas of professional development. He is a former executive search consultant with many years in executive search. He can be reached at Amaxa Group in Dayton, Oh. His telephone number is 937-291-2801 and e-mail address is wmgaffney@prodigy.net.