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Resume Writing 101: Pongo Resume Shares Top Ten Tips and Best Practices For Resume Writing Success

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Tips to Catapult Your Resume to the Top of the Candidate List

NORTHBOROUGH, Mass, April 23, 2009 — Pongo Resume, the premier full-service online resume-building resource that provides a suite of tools to help job seekers market and manage their career, understands the tremendous challenges facing today's job seekers—among them the need to create an eye-popping resume that will help them stand out among the sea of candidates and rise to the top of the resume reader's list.

Based on the caliber of resumes that make it into hiring managers' hands today, many job seekers don’t know the first thing about how to write an effective resume. In today's highly competitive job market, job seekers need all the help they can get.

Here, Pongo’s certified resume writers offer their Top Ten Tips and Best Practices for writing a resume that can help job seekers secure an interview.

1. Make sure they know how to contact you. Always include your most frequently used phone numbers (except work, of course!) and an e-mail address on your resume.
2. Stress accomplishments over duties. Merely listing your job responsibilities does nothing to make your resume stand out among the others. Instead, show how you have contributed to a company’s or department’s success, whether by helping save money, make money, improve productivity, etc. Use numbers, such as, Generated extra $1 million in annual revenue or Helped reduce costs by $250,000 a year.
3. Make it sing with scintillating language. There are bland, factual words to describe your skills and experience, and then there are “vivid, vigorous verbs,” such as spearheaded, developed, drove, and established. Use these and other action-oriented words to describe your accomplishments.
4. Tailor your resume to the job description. Write a "master" resume, then duplicate and tailor it to the job you're applying for by including the most relevant skills and experience.
5. "Ask not what the employer can do for you; tell what you can do for the employer." Hiring managers don’t care what you want. They want to know how you can solve their problems and contribute to the company’s fortunes. So, don’t lead your resume with an objective statement that says you want "A managerial position in a Fortune 500 company that provides professional growth opportunities."
6. Put your best stuff in the top half of the first page. Think about the front page of a newspaper or the home page of a news web site. They put the most important news in the first few lines or paragraphs. You want the hiring manager to have a clear picture—right up front—of what you can do and how it can help the company.
7. TMI = DOA. Yes, too much information can leave your resume dead on arrival. Irrelevant data such as marital status, age, religion, and hobbies used to be standard resume fare, but not anymore. Keep it simple, and tied to the job! But if you do—or did—volunteer work that’s relevant to the job you’re seeking, include it.
8. Use a headline to summarize your value. Something such as “Experienced Finance Director” in large type says a lot about you and makes the resume reader’s job easier, while the standard heading “Professional Summary” doesn’t. Make it easy for them to see your potential value.
9. A picture of you may be worth a thousand words, but that may not be a good thing. Don’t include a personal photo with your resume. A photograph can divert the reader's attention from your qualifications, and lead to judgments (conscious or not) about your looks, your age, or your fashion sense. 
10. Got a profile on LinkedIn or another professional networking site? Include the URL. Social networking is important in today’s job-search strategy, and you can bet that any prospective employer will do a web search for your name before they consider you. Including the URL to a professional profile on LinkedIn or another site professionals use shows you’re keeping up with the latest technologies, and have nothing to hide. (Just be sure you indeed have nothing to hide.)

About Pongo Resume:
Pongo Resume is a premier, full-service online resource for job seekers. The Pongo Resume web site provides all the tools, templates, and support you need to write professional resumes and cover letters, ace tough interviews, and secure great jobs. Pongo users generate over 100,000 resumes per month. Privately held and headquartered in Northborough, Massachusetts, Pongo Resume currently has more than 4 million registered users and averages over a half-million unique visitors per month. For more information, visit http://www.pongoresume.com or call 1-866-486-4660.

Contact: Diane Coffey; Kel & Partners; 617.904.9393, ext. 117; Cell: 508.259.9584; diane@kelandpartners.com