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
   • Use `` for a left quote
   • Use ’’ (two single-quotes) for a right quote
   • Wrong: ”using double quotes is incorrect, the left quote will not render correctly”
   • More info: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/10670/quotes-in-latex