Resume Skeleton

Name

Contact:

Your Address (Snail Mail & eMail), Phone# & Website/blog

Most recruiters prefer to call. Make sure your phone has a good voicemail.
If you are overseas, then choose a VOIP phone which can give you a number which would be local to the companies you are applying in.

Profile

(Alternative titles: Introduction, Professional Objective, Executive Summary, Career Focus, Overview)

Your Profile contains your brand statement and it should give the hiring manager reasons to hire you.

Suggestions:

You can simply mention your Professional Objective or Elevator Pitch in the profile
You can optionally choose to have a longer profile – one paragraph with several sentences.
You can also combine your professional objective with a short summary as your “Profile”.

Highlights

(Alternative titles: Key Skills, Areas of Expertise, Core Strengths )

Emphasize skills which are most relevant to the job – look up job advertisement to identify the skills listed as required.
Don’t use periods at the end of sentences, use short bulleted phrases
Use present tense – Project Management instead of Managed Projects..

Accomplishments

(Alternative titles: Awards & Recognitions, Achievements )

Use short bulleted phrases
Use facts, figures and quantify your accomplishments (eg. Increased customer satisfaction by 73%).
List results not duties/responsibilities. Use your accomplishment stories in this section.
Use past tense – Managed Projects instead of Project Management.

Professional Experience

(Alternative titles: Work Experience, Experience)

Study the advertisement for the job you are applying for – Emphasize experience which relates to those listed in the job advertisement.
List quantifid achievements using action verbs – not merely duties.
Be very specific.
If you can not divulge the name of sensitive projects or names of end clients mention the nature of their business.Give a one sentence description of your previous company.
Use reverse chonological order – include all job titles in the same company to emphaszie career progression.
For every role – summarize your primary responsibily/acomplishment in a sentence or two in bold before you list all the accomplishemnts for that role.
Summarize at the end of every experience for each role – in a sentence or two – what you learned there would help you bring value to the position you are applying for – For example: “Working in the Automation Project in XYZ Co., I learnt the real benefit and cost savings possible through creative solutions.”
Do not underestimate the value of experiences gained in personal, entrepreneural and volunteer work. These include your experience as a mother, wife, cook, homemaker, volunteer, citizen committees, dressmaker/sewing, student organisations etc. – These may be helpful in filling up gaps in your employment history.
If you have stayed for long time in one company – highlight each level of promotion that you have gone through instead of just listing your last title.
Highlight experiences such that they appear progressive in nature – showing how your early experiences laid the foundation for more senior positions.
For very long work history – you can summarize some of the earlier experience as: “Roles prior to 2001 included IT Manager, Director of IT and Global Lead DBA”.
Review if you need to leave out anything which shows you in poor light.

Education

(Alternative titles: Specialized Training, Certifications, Professional Courses, Accreditations, Professional Development)

In addition to formal education, degrees and diplomas – highlight any on the job trainings, online learning, conferences, certifications etc .
Highlight awards and other educational achievements (eg First in a class of 90 etc).
Do not include GPAs etc unless they are very very impressive.
Highlight the higest degrees first.
You can optionally choose to split this section into two parts Education (formal education – specially if you have impressive credentials like MBA, Ph.D, MS etc) and Training (specialized courses, on-the-job training, certifications etc).

Additional Information

In this section you can include misc information which does not find a place anywhere else in the resue,

Professional Affiliations:

Apprenticeships, membership in professional bodies etc
List membership in local civic or business organizations (Chamber of Commerce etc), committes served on, industry groups etc. Specially highlight those which emphasize your organisational and project management capabilities.
Emphasize how your involvement and experience in these bodies can help you bring value to the job you are applying for.

Languages: Spanish, Russian, English

Interests: Cross country skiing, Karate.

Volunter & Community Work: Chairman, Toastmasters, NYC Chapter.