The Basics of a Great Chronological Resume

So you are ready to put together a resume. You’ve determined (hypothetically) that the chronological resume best displays your skills as they relate to the desired position. Now the question is, where do you start?

In the header, you’ll want to include contact information. Don’t be shy…you want your prospective employer to have plenty of ways to get in touch with you. Include full name, home address, phone number (home or cell, whichever you are most likely to answer), and an email address. A note about email addresses…the pseudo-cool email address you came up with in high school may not give the best impression. If your email address of choice is blondebimbo@lovesagoodtime.com, RUN (don’t walk) over to hotmail and create a new one. I find that firstname.mi.lastname@hotmail.com gives a much more professional feel.

Next, you have a choice. You can start with an objective statement, or move straight into your experience. If you choose to include an objective, keep it short and to the point. Also, keep it focused on the goals of the company, not on your personal career goal. Bad example: I want to begin a new job with a good company that appreciates my talents. Good example: To contribute to the strength and growth of a professional health care organization where my talents can be used to promote improved process efficiencies and create a culture of excellence. Money-zine.com has some additional examples of how to write a great objective statement.

Next, we’ll include work history. People often ask, how many years should I go back. On a surface level, I would say no more than 10 years. However, a better answer is, as far as you need to go back in order to demonstrate that you are a strong candidate for this position. A note of caution, if we are going back 30 years to identify the necessary skills, we may have chosen incorrectly when we decided to use the chronological resume format.

For each position, include the name of the company, your title, the city and state, and the dates that you were there (Month and Year). You’ll want to include a BRIEF description of your role as well as 3-5 of your biggest accomplishment while you were there. Again, a note of caution, your accomplishments listed should have a direct correlation to the position you are applying for. If it’s completely unrelated, it does not make you any more or less qualified for the position, so it just wastes precious space on your resume.

An additional tip, when you are listing your work history, try to include key words from the prospective company’s job description. If they want a motivated self-starter, show them when you were a motivated self-starter! There is no reason to avoid replicating their language.

After your work history, you need to include education, certification, licensure, or other qualification requirements for the position. Here, I would move away from chronological order and simply list the most impressive accomplishments first.

Occasionally, I still see people list their “interests” on their resume. PLEASE DON’T. This is not the time to express your love of long walks on the beach, country music, or contact sports.

This should give you the basics of a great resume. Ideally, it either stayed on one page, or filled two pages. Try not to go beyond two pages. Also, if it ends up sitting at a page and a half, either find another half page of accomplishments, or cut it down to a page. Leaving a page half blank looks like you ran out of stuff to say and gave up.

Sound like a lot of work? It is. It can take quite a while the first time, but it gets much easier as you prepare your second, third, fourth…eventually, it just becomes habit. Success is a habit. Work is a habit. Keep practicing these proven job search techniques and you will be on your way to your next position!