In What Color is Your Parachute, Carol Christen says, “Resumes are not a very effective job-search tool for adults. They are even less effective for younger workers. Usually, younger workers lack experience in the jobs or fields in which they most want to work” (2015). Instead, she says it’s better for job seekers to create a website. My experience is that websites are the expected vehicle for people in creative fields, such as copywriters, cinematographers, and artists, but companies will still want to see resumes. For graduating job-seekers, the classic “skills-focused” resume highlights your strengths and your work experience. Your school’s career center can help you refine your resume. Temple University’s Career Center has a number of sample resumes from students from a variety of majors.
Currently, there is debate about whether resumes should be one page or two pages long. The existing wisdom is that two pages are perfectly acceptable. However, Eric Schlesinger cites research that one-page resumes are read more often than two-page resumes, and conversely, two-page resumes are more often ignored. Whatever the length of your resume, it should be well-designed and contain no errors or fabrications. Any errors will show sloppy (or unethical) character and get you rejected fast. Even if you do not get caught fabricating anything at first, you could be fred when it comes to light.
The purpose of the resume is not to sell yourself but to get an interview. You want to make a good impression; eight seconds is the average time an employer spends initially looking at your resume. After that, each resume goes into one of two piles: “Fuggetaboutit” and “Maybe.”
You might feel angry it only takes eight seconds to be rejected or accepted, but there are a lot of candidates out there similar to you. As much as your parents and teachers praised your “uniqueness,” others out there are just as “unique” as you. In order to make your resume stand out, you should think of the qualities that make you a better candidate than other applicants.
Most candidates have multiple resumes to emphasize the different skills they have. For example, let’s say you are good at engineering and at making sales. You want to emphasize your strength in sales for a sales job and your engineering ability for an engineering job. In other words, your resume should be custom-tailored to each job opening.