Which of the following sections do you usually include in your resume, and in what order?

Mine starts with my name and contact info, and a two line statement of my general position/abilities/skills ("A full time professional artist coming from a back ground of architecture and theater. Also owner and primary painter of Deeper Blue Design, Mural Artists, and teaching occasional painting classes."). Then has sections on Education, Awards and Shows, Experience. In the left margin beside about every other description of a project or event I have a color image of that project. So next to the description of one of the shows, for instance, I have the signature piece from that show. All in all I think I have five photos on the resume and three colors besides black in the text.

jen- are awards and publications fluff in the positions for which you are interviewing?

Topper: my company keeps sending me people to interview, and for me everything is fluff except for

'why do you want this job'
'does your brain have room for more information so we can teach you this job'
and
'do I want to spend eight hours a day with you for the next year'.

I don't have a resume. Although some time soon I should start getting a CV together. But I won't need it for a while yet.

topper: I look at everything on the resume, the key bits that stick out for me are the past couple of years of employment history (or college for a recent graduate - there's not a lot that matters prior to that given how often people change jobs), skills, and any interesting experiences that help give me a hook to understanding what kind of person I'm meeting and how they approach doing their job & living their life. I don't bother with the goals section because they're like horoscopes - either so vague as to be meaningless, or so specific that they don't fit the position. My previous employer looked at candidates for Attitude, Aptitude, Willingness to learn, and Experience in that order of priority. From the resume you can learn about experience, some about aptitude and willingness to learn, and not a whole lot about attitude, so although the resume gets you in the door, the interview is way more important overall.

drdt: In interviews, I start out by explaining what we're up to (if the candidate hasn't heard it yet), what I'm up to and ask if s/he has any questions from previous interviews that day - I find the questions candidates ask often to be more revealing than their answers. The key questions I then ask are:

"What do you see yourself doing in two years?" with the subtext of "How does that fit into this company?"
"Tell me about a work experience that sucked," with an eye towards understanding how (well) the person dealt with it as well as learning what the person doesn't like.
"Tell me about a work experience that made you psyched."
I'll also ask for a self-assesment of strengths & weaknesses, and maybe probe with a couple of questions on specific skills if that's necessary. Between using specific examples and the self-assessment I can get a pretty good idea of the person, whether they fit the position, and whether I can work with them.

It's been a while since I looked at it, I certainly don't remember (or care).

publications & presentations go into work experience, on mine. My work section is split into subsections for relevant fulltime, contract, part time, volunteer & 'papers and presentations'


i practice judo interviewing, with leading questions like jonathan indicates. i like to have the ;fluff; available to see what kind of person they _present_ themselves to be, and how that matches or conflicts what we talk about. someone who lies on 'fluff' is just as untrustworthy as one who lies anywhere else, IMNSHO.

My resume has contact info at the top and sections for employment history, formal education, publications and patents (the patents are listed first), other professional activities (memberships, editorial, and conference activity in that order), and references. I don't include objectives or skills because I find them useless on other people's resumes. I don't include personal information or awards because I don't have any that are recent enough to be relevant, but I would if for instance I were fluent instead of simply half-assed in any foreign languages.

phi: Why do you find skills useless?

Very: people can lie about skills. 'I think I took a class in this once, I can count it as a skill.' I got really annoyed when I found out a recruiter was assuming all the stuff I said I was good at, was just a bunch of buzzwords I thought would look good on a resume. All she wanted to look at was the stuff I had been paid to do. And since I hadn't had been working as a sysadmin for three years it looked bad.

OTOH, the interviewer has to know something to interpret a list of positions held, so that is a pretty good screening process for them, too. 'What do you mean, What kind of work did I do as a router designer at Cisco?"?'

drdt: people can lie about anything.

Very: but you can check with their previous employers and their school. The only way to check up on their skills is to quiz them on the spot, and it is easier to assume they are lying.

See for yourself: http://www.apocalypse.org/~bill/resume.html

bill: Yer resume needs an update for your ir-Rational-ness.

I don't remember. I do have one though.