Resume What Do You Really Need? Part III

Format is yet another part of the resume. What format is best Chronological, Functional or Combined? Many word processing programs have resume templates, which are good but don't really help you with questions that you may have about what to put in your resume. We found a resume program at Half Price Books called Resume Works Pro for less than $10, you can also find a copy on Amazon.com from $15-19. It is easy to use and has a lot of helpful features.

• Resume samples
• You can convert the resume that you create in Resume Works Pro to MS Word, PDF and text files
• Tons of sample cover letters
• Contact manager
• The ability to easily edit the look and content of your resume after you finish to change the style or add/delete sections.
• A walk through much like many Income Tax programs.

Formats, Chronological is the most common but may not be for you. I found a good explanation of the three types here it is for Psychology but much of it applies to everyone. I found that the Combined format works best for me, due to the complexity of my job field. Next, is the different sections within your resume. Which ones to use is up to you but, I have the following; Name and contact information, Job Title, Summary, Work Experience, Designs, Skills, Patents, Security Clearance, Education and References.

• Name and contact information - Pretty self explanatory (Name, Address, Phone numbers & Email). If you have an online resume on Monster or one of the others, I suggest that you only put your name and maybe the area in which you live (Dallas, TX or San Diego, CA) and leave off the rest of the information.
  
• Job Title - I use the industry standard job title for my profession "IC Mask Designer"
• Summary - I use Summary as opposed to Objective just because one it tells someone exactly what you do and two if you are sending a resume "duh, you are looking for a job." This is just my opinion.
• Experience - For my situation, since I worked for the same company but several groups within the company, I chose to use the following format for my experience. Company Name - Group Name, Location (Dallas, TX), Dates and Title. Then used bullet points for each detail of my job, this comes in to the keyword searches from employers.
• Skills - I have all of my programming languages, programs (MS Office, AutoCAD, Photo Shop, etc.), operating systems (Mac, PC, Linux, Sun workstations, etc.)
  
• Designs - A list of all of the designs that I worked on.
  
• Patents - A list of my patent number's and what they are used in.
• Security Clearance - This helps if you wind up applying for a company that contracts with the government, even if it is not currently active.
• Education - I only have use my college education. Most people say not to use your high school since it dates you if you are "cough cough" a middle aged to older person. In my case though my college eduction still dates me.
• References - I put "Available upon request" for one references will extend your resume. Always ask before you put someone as a reference.
  

This software has tons of resume examples from Account Executive to Worldwide Procurement Director. Although, I did not find exact matches for my field, I did find a lot of examples that I could adapt to fit my resume. I wound up with a great resume that is also pleasing to the eye that will hopefully help get me a new job.