GUIDEScareerresume checklist

Resume Proofreading Checklist

Stand out to employers by following this checklist to avoid common resume mistakes.

Check out here for a more comprehensive resume guide.

Resume Checklist

  1. Don't use a flashy resume template. We recommend FlowCV.io

    • Keep the colors minimal (White, Black, Dark Blue)
    • No photos
  2. Place an expected graduation date.

  3. Emphasize the impact you make in your experience, not the responsibilities you had

    • Ex: Instead of "Helped customers shop" say "Generated $x in sales by helping customers with their purchases"
  4. Place the most recent experience at the top.
  5. Start each bullet with an action verb

  6. Proofread your bullets.

    • Spelling and grammatical errors are not good looks and avoidable

  7. Avoid excessively wordy bullets: conciseness makes the readers’ lives easier.

    • Each bullet should be a sentence
    • If you have multiple sentences on one bullet you should break it up into multiple bullets
  8. Avoid acronyms unless it is widely familiar to non-technical readers

  9. Avoid putting content in the extreme top or bottom of the page.

    • A cheap printer might cut out the extreme top or bottom.
    • leave a ≥1/2 inch margin for safety.

  10. Avoid unnecessarily long names.

    • Analytic Geometry & Calculus -> Calculus.
    • Introduction to Systems Software -> Systems Software
    • The extra words generally do not convey enough information to justify the space that the words take up.

  11. Make links clickable.

    • Verify LinkedIn/GitHub links, personal/project websites, and email addresses.

LaTeX-specific tidbits

  1. Use \LaTeX when referencing LaTeX (for example, in a skills section) in a LaTeX resume.

  2. Quotation marks

Last updated: Jul 28th 2023