White Consulting Partners - Resumé Design

Resumé Design
The design of your resumé should be clear, logical and highlight your achievements. The document should sell your unique advantage to a potential employer. Resumés should contain information in the following categories, although not necessarily in this order:-

Personal Profile
Education
Professional Training
Career Summary
Employment History
Referees

It is imperative that you include essential information within these headings. Optional information is not always relevant and may or may not be included. This depends largely on personal preference and the type of role you are applying for.

Personal Profile
Essential
Name, address, contact details.

Optional
Hobbies and interests, date of birth, marital status, residency status.

Education
Essential
List of all tertiary courses completed; state the year the course was completed, the institution where you studied, the course/ degree title. Make mention of any special awards or commendations.

Professional Training
Essential
State the courses attended, starting with the most recent first and dating back no more than ten years. List courses which are both current and relevant to the position you are applying for. The date of completion, the course title, who ran the course and where it was held are also essential.

Career Summary
Essential
A Career Summary is an 'executive summary' of your work history and achievements. It describes your achievements from both a technical and a management perspective and should be no more than half a page to one page long. Your achievements should be described in terms of the benefits you brought to the organisation.

Employment History
Essential
This should outline your career history starting with your most recent position. State the name of the employer, the dates you commenced and concluded your employment (including the month and year), the position held, your responsibilities and achievements. As above, your achievements should be described in terms of the benefits you brought to the organisation.

Please note that if you worked for a consultancy company, you do not need to list all of your assignments. Select major assignments and if you are unable to give the names of clients (for confidentiality reasons), you may describe the organisation, for example 'Large Financial Services Organisation', 'Large Retail Company'.

Optional

The title of the person you reported to.
If the organisation worked for is not large or well known, describe who they are and what they do.
You may wish to include a short summary of your employment history in a table format on the front page of your resumé, setting out the essential details of your work history (name of employer, dates employed, and position). This could be inserted beneath your 'Personal Profile'.
Please note that details of the last ten years of your employment are relevant, however information regarding earlier work history should be minimal and contain only the essential details (name of employer, dates employed, and position).

Referees
Essential
State that referees are available on request

Optional
List names, positions held and contact details for referees.

Presentation of your Resumé

Give consideration to the typeface and font size of the text contained in your resumé. Ensure that the typeface is not complicated or difficult to read and the font size is neither too small nor too large; a font size of 12 is considered acceptable.
Given that your application will be forwarded over the Internet, the documents should be in MS Word format.
Use white space to break up the text. Stand back and question the visual impact of your resumé.
Be mindful of the overuse of graphics as this may cause printing and downloading difficulties.
Your resumé should be no more than 5-7 pages long.

Conclusion
There have been many books and articles written on this topic and all resumés are not, and cannot, be completely uniform. These guidelines are based on what we have found to be the most simple and effective way of communicating your experience. Resumé design is personal and the style and content will vary depending on the type of role you seek. The above are guidelines which we hope will assist you in creating a resumé for success.