The document provides tips for creating an effective resume to market yourself professionally. It emphasizes customizing your resume for different jobs and industries by tweaking your objective statement and including relevant keywords. Key points include prioritizing important accomplishments, noting unique experiences, avoiding exaggerations or lies, and having others evaluate your resume before sending it out.

1. Market yourself on the paper
Now that you have some experiences and accomplishments to show potential
employers, you have to think about how these achievements appear on paper and on
the web. Your résumé, cover letters, and online profiles are the marketing materials that
represent you in the professional world. No matter how fabulous you are in person, you
must have these other elements in order to get hired.
First, let’s put the résumé into perspective: a résumé is one tool in a comprehensive,
multifaceted job search. Just because it’s an “official” document, don’t panic and give
the résumé more power than it actually has. It’s a tool. A marketing piece. A necessity. It
is not going to single-handedly get you a job, but you need it to get your foot in the door
and eventually get hired. All of that said, you should also be aware that a résumé can
lose an opportunity—if it’s messy, unprofessional, unpersuasive, or has errors or typos.

2. Brush up your résumé
These are some tips on how to makeover your résumé:
Be careful with contact info. Every phone number or e-mail address you put on your
résumé could be used by a potential employer. Make sure you frequently check any
communication method you list.
Tweak your résumé for different jobs and industries. It is very likely that you will be
applying for jobs in a variety of different companies and even different industries.
Employers can tell when they are seeing a generic résumé that is being blasted out to
anyone and everyone. It’s fine to have such a résumé as a template, but then you need
to customize that résumé with a different objective statement and different keywords
that fit with the individual companies to which you’re sending it. For instance, if you are
applying for positions in both investment banking and consulting, you should have one
résumé for each, with “an investment banking position” included in your objective on
one résumé and “a consulting position” on the other.
Another smart way to customize your objective is for the type of company. If you are
applying for engineering jobs at government agencies and corporations, one résumé
objective may highlight your desire to work in public service, while the other might refer
to your desire to increase a corporation’s bottom line. Note that most online job sites
allow you to store multiple versions of your résumé online.
Include keywords. Not only will online job sites search for keywords on your résumé, but
so will potential employers. Employers’ eyes are naturally drawn to the words they’re
looking for—the brand names, skills, and experience they need. This is particularly
important in technical fields, such as computer programming. So make sure you give

3. them what they want. You can have the exact experience an employer is seeking, but if
it’s not presented on your résumé in the words they’re looking for, your résumé will
never show up in their searches.
Prioritize. When you list bullet points under each job, internship, or volunteer
experience you’ve had, be sure to list the most important task, accomplishment, or
responsibility first. It’s highly unlikely that a potential employer is going to read every
bullet point under every item on your résumé, but most people will read the first or
second bullet point on each list. You don’t have to list accomplishments chronologically;
list the most impressive first. Also, note that more challenging jobs should have more
bullet points than less challenging work experiences.
Note anything notable. Be sure to list anything about you that is unique and
uncommon.“These notables are what set you apart from the crowd. They are what I
look for in deciding whom to interview. And they are the basis for many of the
compelling stories told in interviews which lead to eventual offers.” Some examples
include, “Founding president of the first-ever entrepreneurial club at XYZ University,”
“Winner of the Anita Lawrence Scholarship for Excellence in Social Studies, awarded
annually to the top junior history student,” or “Youngest person ever promoted to
assistant manager at this local high-end jewelry store.”
Don’t lie, exaggerate, or stretch the truth. This happens way too often, and it’s never
a good idea. There are so many reasons not to lie on a résumé. First of all, if your lie or
truth-stretching gets discovered, you’ll lose a job opportunity with that company forever.
Second, if you exaggerate your skills, such as being fluent in Spanish when you really
just studied it in high school, or you say you know C++ when you don’t, your lie will
become extremely obvious the day you start your job and you lack the skills you said
you had. And finally, any little white lies you put on your résumé now can cost you big
later in your career. Even if the lie is discovered twenty years in the future (as has been
the unfortunate case with some prominent CEOs and politicians), your early career
mistake can ruin your entire professional reputation. I definitely encourage you to cast
your skills and experience in the most positive light, but never, ever take it too far.

4. Evaluate your resume before you send it
Before you show or send your newly made-over résumé to any potential employer, you
have to test it first. You may already have done this at various informational interviews,
or with your school’s career services office, or with your parents, which are all great. But
there are a few more tests your résumé needs to pass before I feel comfortable giving
you the go-ahead to send it out into the Real World.
Next, make sure your résumé will pass muster in the industry you want to join. As you
learned earlier, you need eyewitnesses to give you advice about job searching in a
particular industry, and these people are also important advisers on your résumé. What
is impressive on a legal résumé is different from what is required on an artist’s résumé,
which is different from what’s necessary on an engineer’s résumé. If you haven’t
already, show your résumé to anyone you know in your desired field(s) and get their
opinion before you apply for jobs.
Finally, check, double-check, triple-check, quadruple-check for any typos or spelling and
grammar mistakes. Sometimes the worst offenders in this area are English majors
because they assume they’re smart enough not to make any errors. Typos happen to
the best of us, so be careful.