Are Too Many Bullets Shooting Your Resume Down?

The purpose of using bullets in a resume is to highlight the resume owner's abilities.  However, many resume writers use too many bullets throughout their resume and this tends to "puncture" the resume's content.    

Resume Check List

• Does the resume appear neat, organized and professional?

• Is the text balanced on the page?

• Have you avoided having your text cramped or crowded on the page?

• Are spelling, grammatical and typographical errors eliminated?

• Could the resume tell the same story if it were shortened?

• Have you kept your resume to no more than 2 pages?

• Does the resume avoid generalities and focus on the specific information about your education, experience and skills?

• Did you use standard established font such as Arial or Times New Roman?

• Did you state your summary or objective clearly and concisely?

• Does your resume support the objective or summary?
• Did you use bullets, underlining, boldface and capitalization to create visual interest?
• Is your most recent education/training listed first?
• Did you devote more space to most recent positions and less space to earlier positions?

• Are your dates and other information correct?

• Did you eliminate or de-emphasize non-relevant work experience?

• Did you include an e-mail address for faster communication?

• Do your statements start with action verbs?

• Have eliminated such data as your social security number, weight, height, age, marital status, religion and race?

• Did you use a separate page for references?

 Designing a Military-to-Civilian Resume

      Military personnel moving to  a   civilian position should focus on the military skills they have learned which can be transferred.  When a resume is submitted, it takes an employer  approximately 15 seconds to decide if they are going to read a résumé to its conclusion. Formatting for a military résumé follows the same guidelines as that of a standard non-military résumé. Accordingly, the wording should be comparatively similar with the exception that the résumé creator will put forth their skills and qualifications in non-military language.   

      While this task may seem relatively easy, removing and recreating your skills and experience from the military environment to a civilian one can be a quite a challenge.  In non-military resumes, job seekers are taught to pull key words from their past work skills and experience and fit them to the position they are seeking.  The same holds true for a person with a military background, this job seeker should focus on crafting a history of work experience identifiable by a civilian employer in order to be considered for any position. 

       Within the all important résumé summary (which can simply be titled “Summary” or Summary Statement” as well as “Experience Summary” or “Professional Experience Summary”) the wording should be short and simple by briefly describing the person (you) and the job(s) sought.  Example of a non-military lead-in would be:  “Talented, accomplished _______ (this would be the title of the civilian position which most parallels the military one) with proven ability to _______________ (this would include a list of your abilities put into civilian terms such as  “lead and direct teams” or “direct project management groups and implement ____”, etc.).  This paragraph can be bulleted or can remain as a highlight of the creator’s résumé by using italics or bolding of the description statements to catch the reader’s eye.

Have a laundry list of varying experience and responsibility within your military career?  When creating your résumé’s work experience section, you should significantly narrow the list to fit the position you are seeking. Example:  If you have years of experience within military staffing areas, then you will pull from your experience in order to create a résumé which focuses on human resources management and would highlight areas pertinent to the position such as team building, training and development, strategic planning, etc. (all excellent résumé keywords).  Always remember to custom tailor your résumé and retain originality in its format, design and content.